Childish Things

by Robin Jenkins

  So poor Madge was hoping after all that I might be able to help Frank get that account.

  ‘Your son-in-law, the goofy guy that works in the bank, called me yesterday to say that you were back in San Diego.’

  ‘He shouldn’t have bothered you, Linda. You don’t mind my calling you Linda?’

  She laughed. ‘You have my permission, Professor.’ She became serious. ‘I was sorry to hear about your wife. I remember her well. A tall white-haired lady with an honest smile and a voice I could have listened to all day.’

  Yes, that was Kate. But perhaps ‘honest’, though very appropriate, was rather a strange word to use. Could there possibly be an insinuation that my smiles were not so honest?

  ‘I had a chat with her once, you know.’

  I hadn’t known. Kate had never mentioned it.

  ‘I know how you must feel, Professor.’

  Had she lost someone whom she had loved? I tried to remember if any of her husbands had died while she was married to him. Yes, her first, old Al Birkenberger.

  ‘My sister Margarita died when she was ten. I was eight.’

  That must have been over 60 years ago. Linda had kept her childhood a secret. As I had myself.

  ‘Would you believe I still miss her? Most people don’t know I had a sister. I would have told your wife about her. So, since she isn’t here, I’ve told you.’

  ‘I feel honoured, Linda.’

  Her tone changed. ‘Do you remember, Professor, you recommended a book to me? Middlemarch by George Eliot.’

  It had been like sending a novice climber up the north face of the Eiger.

  ‘Yes, I remember. I’m sorry if you found it hard going.’

  ‘I didn’t ask for something easy. I asked for something with class. I guess it’s got plenty of that. I’ve read it three times.’

  But how much of it had she understood?

  ‘I often read bits of it. Like some people read the Bible. It’s boring as hell in places but I’ve stuck with it. I reckon it must have real class if it bores me and yet makes me want to go on reading it.’

  ‘It is that kind of book.’

  ‘I’d like to discuss it with you, Professor.’

  ‘Any time, Linda.’

  ‘Why not now? There’s a car on its way to pick you up. That’s if you don’t mind having lunch with an old woman as common as shit.’

  I managed not to gasp at the deliberate vulgarity. Was she testing me in some way? Or was she showing her opinion of the very proper heroines of Middlemarch, Dorothea and Rosamund?

  Trying to hide my excitement I went back to my friends.

  ‘Well, was it your daughter?’ asked Bud.

  ‘No. It was Mrs Birkenberger.’

  Bud and Chuck laughed.

  ‘Are you sure it wasn’t Nancy Reagan?’ said Bud.

  ‘She’s invited me to lunch. There’s a car coming for me.’

  ‘Good God, the guy means it,’ cried Bud.

  He and Chuck looked concerned.

  ‘What’s she up to?’ asked Bud. ‘You’re a swell guy, Gregor, and you’ve got a beautiful golf swing, but you’re no match for Linda. She’ll chew you to pieces.’

  ‘She’s done it before. The poor guys were never the same again,’ said Chuck.

  ‘The lady does not take kindly to fortune-hunters,’ said Hal. ‘But Gregor is different.’

  Well, how different was Gregor?

  The servant came then to say the car had arrived.

  Off I went, smiling. I made for the gents’, not only to empty my bladder but also to comb my hair and smooth my moustache. Looking at my face in the mirror, I tried not to see a fortune-hunter.

  The car was a white Cadillac. The door was being held open for me by a Mexican chauffeur.

  What, I wondered, as I lay back on the luxurious cushions, would the Druids of Murchison’s tearoom have said if they had seen me then?

  I let myself dream. Linda and I fell in love. We got married. Stranger things had happened, especially in California. It wouldn’t last long but, during it, the magic of great wealth would be mine. That villa in Acapulco. De luxe hotels all over the world. Golf with famous professionals.

  These, though, were a fortune-hunter’s ambitions. I rejected them. My purpose was to help the lady improve her mind. Without offending her – it would take great tact – I would persuade her that expressions like ‘as common as shit’ were unworthy of her.

  The chauffeur turned and smiled. ‘I am Miguel, sir,’ he said.

  ‘How do you do, Miguel? My name is Mr McLeod.’

  ‘English, sir?’

  ‘No. Scottish.’

  ‘Is it not the same?’

  ‘No. There are many differences.’

  For instance, the Scots were the most democratic, the most approachable, of people. They had the knack of being friendly without subservience or sycophancy.

  5

  It was a half-hour’s ride, through semi-desert. The house could be seen far off, a white flash on a green hill. According to Frank, Mrs Birkenberger had bought it for $ 3,000,000 after the death of the man who had had it built. He had been a recluse, which explained its isolation, its 12-foot fence, its iron gates, and its armed guards. These last were now demanded by the insurance company because of the paintings that Mrs Birkenberger perversely kept in the house instead of hiding them away in a bank vault.

  The misanthrope must have loved birds, bees, and butterflies, for he had planted for their delight all round the house and on the slopes of the hill a vast garden of flowers, fragrant shrubs, and trees with blossoms. Scattered about were statues dressed only in moss and lichens. He had not minded talking to people as long as they were made of marble or bronze.

  The house itself, two-storeyed, was white with red shutters. Bougainvillea climbed to the upper windows. There was a spacious terrace with many pots and urns bright with flowers.

  As I got out of the car and breathed in the perfumed air I felt I had outdone Ulysses. In his travels, he had never reached Elysium.

  Down the steps from the terrace came not my hostess, but a different woman altogether. About 40, tall, black-haired, grave-faced, and wearing a plain dark blue dress with no jewellery, not even rings, she was, I could not help thinking, more suited to be mistress of this splendid estate. When she spoke, I was not surprised to find her voice deep, but quiet and pleasant.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr McLeod,’ she said, smiling. ‘I’m Sarah Morland, Mrs Birkenberger’s housekeeper. She would like you to join her on the patio.’

  She led me through large sunny rooms to French windows that gave onto a patio shaded by a large magnolia tree. There sat Linda, wearing dark glasses and holding a book. Just below was a swimming pool four times the size of Frank’s, and in the distance, blue also but hazier, shone the immeasurable Pacific.

  In her daffodil-yellow blouse and pants of pillarbox red, Linda hardly looked a likely owner of this Elysian domain. Yet she was curiously beautiful. Her face was smooth and her neck, also 70 years old, was plump when it ought to have been scraggy. Disconcerting too was the blackness of her hair, with not a single white or grey one to be seen. But what made her an improbable châtelaine was her voice. Though an accomplished actress, able to imitate any accent, even that of Dorothea Brooke in Middlemarch, she spoke as she must have done many years ago when a waitress in a greasy spoon. Had it to do with some misguided conception of honesty?

  ‘Hi, Professor,’ she said, taking off her glasses. ‘Take a seat. You’ll be tired after the golf.’

  ‘Linda, this is an enchanting place.’

  She laughed. ‘What am I then? The princess to be rescued from the ogress, or the ogress herself?’

  Her eyes, violet in colour, were far from meek. Her wide lively mouth would never be prim.

  Years ago, on a conducted tour of the Palais Real in Madrid, with its 2800 rooms (only 45 were on view) and its inexhaustible display of beautiful artefacts, chandeliers, tapestries, paintings, clocks, porcelain,
silverwork, and furniture, the guide had pointed to the portrait of the king whose idea it had been to build and furnish that magnificent palace: a small insignificant señor who wouldn’t have been noticed in any Spanish street. I had wondered if possession of great wealth and the magnificence it could bring about inevitably bestowed a distinction on the owner.

  Did Linda show any signs of such a distinction? It seemed to me she did, though I would have found it hard to describe.

  ‘Would you like something to drink, Professor?’ she asked.

  ‘Thank you, Linda. Some white wine, perhaps?’

  She did not ring a bell, she bawled.

  ‘You’re looking very well, Professor,’ she said.

  ‘May I return the compliment?’

  ‘How long are you going to be in California?’

  ‘I haven’t decided yet. No great hurry, mind you, to return to Scotland in the winter.’

  ‘I’ve never been to Scotland. I hear it’s a beautiful country.’

  A manservant appeared, Chinese, in white jacket and black trousers.

  ‘Chung, a bottle of our best white wine, chilled.’

  ‘Yes, madam.’

  ‘And tell them in the kitchen we’ll eat out here, in twenty minutes. That suit you, Professor?’

  ‘Admirably.’

  ‘You can take off your coat if you like.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I removed my black blazer with the Lunderston Golf Club crest in gold and placed it over the back of my chair.

  ‘I see you’ve been tackling Middlemarch again,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve got a question to ask you, Professor. Is there any sex in it?’

  I blinked. ‘Theses have been written on that theme.’

  ‘I guess so, but what’s your opinion?’

  ‘I think there’s sex all right but, of course, it’s suppressed. In those days women of the upper class were not supposed to have sexual feelings.’

  ‘I bet they masturbated like mad.’

  I blinked again.

  ‘Dorothea’s all mind and no body,’ said Linda. ‘See that statue?’

  It was a nymph beside the pool, coyly pressing her thighs together; not that there was anything to hide.

  ‘All shut up,’ said Linda. ‘No way in. Not ever. That’s how I see Dorothea.’

  Chung appeared with the wine in a bucket of ice, and two glasses.

  Linda waited till he was gone.

  ‘Do you know how old Dorothea is?’ she asked.

  ‘I know she’s very young.’

  ‘She’s nineteen. At nineteen, Professor, girls are as hot-assed as boys. Today, then, a thousand years ago.’

  I not only blinked then, I gawked, at the idea of Dorothea being hot-assed.

  ‘You’ll have heard of Billy Malpass, Professor? Famous evangelist.’

  Famous exorciser. ‘Yes, Linda, I’ve heard of him.’

  ‘I once sat beside him at a big dinner in Washington. The President was present. I told him, Malpass, I mean, that it couldn’t have been Samson’s hair that his wife cut off. How could that have taken away his strength? No, it must have been his balls.’

  ‘And what did Mr Malpass say?’

  ‘Give him his due, he said it was an interesting theory. But then he was after a big donation.’

  ‘Did he get it?’

  ‘No, he didn’t.’

  Two little maids then appeared, both dark-skinned, and began to prepare the table for lunch. Their mistress spoke to them in Spanish. They answered respectfully but freely. They were at ease in her presence.

  I wasn’t, not yet, not altogether.

  To make conversation, I said that the housekeeper, Ms Morland, seemed remarkably well-bred.

  ‘So she is. Grandfather was a US Senator. Her father’s a famous surgeon.’

  Why then was she here as a servant? I did not ask it aloud.

  ‘She’s a very attractive woman,’ said Linda.

  ‘Very.’

  Linda smiled. ‘Are you thinking of making a pass at her, Professor? You wouldn’t be the first.’

  ‘But, Linda, I’m a guest in your house.’

  ‘Shit, guests in my house have made passes at me.’

  ‘That, if I may say so, is not quite the same thing.’

  ‘So you think it would be all right for you to make a pass at me but not at Sarah?’

  ‘What I meant was that the relationship of guest to hostess is one that might, without impropriety, ripen into something deeper and more intimate.’

  She laughed. ‘Now you’re talking like a character in Middlemarch. They wrap up what they say in a lot of big words because they’re afraid of telling the truth about themselves and one another.’

  She must have read that in a book.

  ‘By the way, Professor,’ she said, with a change of tone, ‘I’d like you to know that Sarah’s not just my housekeeper. She’s my friend. Let me tell you about her, before someone else does. When she was twenty, about seventeen years ago, she shot a man, killed him.’

  I was shocked but not surprised. Such a doom was written on Morland’s tragic face.

  ‘The bastard had raped her young sister. So Sarah shot him. I’d have shot him too but first I’d have cut his balls off. He was highly connected, so Sarah got seven years in prison. She should have got a medal. Her sister drowned herself.’

  The food then arrived. It was delicious and plentiful: crabmeat salad, smoked salmon, the tenderest of roast beef, the freshest of strawberries, and new-baked bread. The wine, red and white, was vintage French.

  I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I hadn’t kept thinking about Morland. It wasn’t only pity for her that troubled me, it was also that my sucking up to Linda had been revealed as insincere and self-seeking.

  ‘To get back to Middlemarch ,’said Linda, ‘was Mr Casaubon a queer, but George Eliot didn’t know it? That happens in books. So Josh Bolton told me. You’ll have heard of Josh?’

  I nodded. Bolton had written a novel about his war experiences, so bloody, obscene, and scatological that it had made him world-famous and earned him a fortune, which he had squandered on expensive wives.

  ‘Josh told me that often writers don’t understand the characters in their own books. Hell, why should they? Half the time we don’t understand ourselves.’

  ‘Perhaps we don’t try hard enough,’ I said. ‘Perhaps we’re afraid of what we might find out.’

  ‘No perhaps about it. Tell me about Scotland. Do you wear a skirt there?’

  ‘You mean a kilt? Yes, I’ve worn a kilt. I have a Highland name.’

  As a matter of fact, I always wore one at golf-club functions and Burns suppers.

  Linda suddenly stood up. She had eaten and drunk very little. ‘You’ll excuse me, Professor, if I leave you. Time for my siesta. Finish your lunch. Stay as long as you like. If you’d like to look round, Sarah will show you.’

  ‘I’d like to see your paintings, Linda. I believe you’ve got a Rembrandt self-portrait.’

  ‘Sure. I’ll let Sarah know. I have a car I seldom use, Professor. If you want, you can have the use of it.’

  ‘Thank you very much, Linda. It will be very useful.’

  I almost said that it would enable me to visit her often but I stopped myself in time.

  She went off into the house.

  It was stupid of me, there was no justification whatever for it, but I felt that a bond of trust had been established between us.

  I drank more wine than I should, considering that I was going to drive myself home in the loaned car.

  Ms Morland came to take me to see the paintings.

  I had decided to behave towards her as if I did not know her story. That way, she would not become a complication.

  The room where the paintings were kept had a steel door disguised as wood. Inside Ms Morland pressed a button. Steel shutters slid back. Light poured in, and there was old Rembrandt Van Rijn in his nightcap, with boozy nose, raddled cheeks, and ironic eyes.

  On
a pedestal was the bronze bust of an old man, gaunt and wrinkled.

  ‘Mr Birkenberger,’ said Ms Morland. ‘He bought all these paintings. At that time they could be had relatively cheaply. If you knew what to buy. It appears he did.’

  ‘My son-in-law says they’re worth twenty million.’

  ‘A lot more than that.’

  ‘Does Mrs Birkenberger come here often?’

  ‘Yes. She’s very proud of them.’

  ‘So she should be. They’re marvellous.’

  I went from painting to painting, from Cézanne to Van Gogh, from Matisse to Lautrec.

  There were nudes. I found myself wondering what Ms Morland would look like with her clothes off.

  I was immediately rebuked by Rembrandt’s ironic wink.

  Ms Morland must have been impressed by the seriousness with which I was studying the paintings.

  ‘If you would like to stay for a while, Mr McLeod—’

  ‘No, no. I’ll go. I hope to be back often.’

  She escorted me to the terrace. At the foot of the steps was a small red Buick.

  6

  Like the predestinarians of 17th-century Scotland, Frank believed that the Lord had favourites who could do no wrong. In his case they were the rich. If they were also white Americans, they were twice blessed. Mrs Birkenberger was not quite in the top echelon of these elect, not because of her numerous marriages, which were covered by her certificate of exemption, but because she was part Mexican and suspected to have Catholic origins. Nonetheless, by making her very wealthy, the Lord had shown He did not hold those blemishes against her. Therefore, none of His adherents should.

  When he heard that I had had lunch with her, he was ecstatic and, when he saw the car she had lent me, he could not have been more awed if it had been made of gold.

  ‘You must really have impressed her, Dad.’

  ‘I don’t know about that, Frank, but she certainly impressed me. She’s a fascinating woman.’

  ‘Did she mention me at all?’

  I could hardly say that she’d called him the goofy guy that worked in the bank.

  ‘She mentioned that you’d let her know I had come.’

  Madge was listening to this with a face of misery. The reason had nothing to do with me and my relationship with Mrs Birkenberger. It had to do with Midge.