The Beggar's Pawn

by John L'Heureux

  “Your little hand,” he said. “Your little academic hand on mine,” and he covered them with his free hand, making a nice little amorous pile. A warm minute passed. “This is only romance,” he said, sad about it. “We can’t make it more than that.”

  “Romance,” she said.

  “If Will doesn’t mind.”

  “Lovely Will,” she said. “He’s still in love with Daphne.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m in love with Will. I think. More or less.” She took off her engagement ring and slipped it into her pocket. “He’s a very good scholar.”

  “You’re a wonder,” he said. “It’s those glasses you wear.”

  “It’s your . . . I don’t know,” she said.

  They clasped hands across the table.

  “This isn’t about sex,” Sedge began. “At least not yet.” He went on for some time, noting once again the two-year curse on all his marriages and his admiration for—and aspiration to—the ideal marriage of his mother and father and what a perfect son Will had always been, up until now, and how important it was that Will not feel betrayed. They were honorable people. They would do the honorable thing.

  By the end of the hour they had convinced themselves they were in love. Sedge and Cloris. Cloris and Sedge.

  Now if only Will could be reasonable about this.

  * * *

  —

  MAGGIE SPENT HER MORNING doing housework, ordering groceries, and in general tidying up after a family that had complete control of her life but no control of their own. Only David understood. What luck that they had found each other. And what luck that in their old age they had found the perfect child—well, grandchild—in little Iris. She suspected she loved Iris more than her own children but that would be a terrible thing. She just felt grateful they had Iris in their lives. Thank God. Or Somebody.

  * * *

  —

  MEANWHILE CLAIRE WAS HAVING lunch with Reginald at Burger Heaven. He was a vegetarian only when he ate at home, he explained, because eating out had a social dimension that allowed for meat. Especially a burger. Claire nodded agreement because frankly she didn’t give a damn. She had bigger things to think about than the ethical problem of eating burgers. She could not get her mother’s bitchery out of her mind, and when she tried to focus on Reginald she thought only of how dissatisfying she had found the sex of the previous evening. Reginald, however, both then and now, was happily preoccupied with his grandmother’s imminent death.

  “She’s gonna leave me the whole deal,” he said. “The property, the house—wreck though it is—and all that nice money.”

  “You’ll probably give it away, though, so you can walk in the way of the Lord, right?”

  He scarcely heard her.

  “As a matter of fact, you’ve never explained how you reconcile our screwing parties with your devotion to the Lord.”

  “What?” He was brought back suddenly from the consoling reverie of his grandmother’s demise to this lunch table at Burger Heaven. And Claire. He hadn’t enjoyed their sexual encounters and he blamed her. Cold bitch. Lesbian. How had he ever gotten involved with Claire? And why? “What?” he said again.

  “Walking in the way of the Lord. How do you reconcile this with adultery?”

  “You don’t understand,” he said. “It’s not about laws. It’s about your interior disposition. ‘Ama et fac quod vis,’ Augustine says. ‘Love and do what you want.’ That’s the real way of the Lord. Love and justice.” Forgetting how annoyed he was with her, he developed his ideas of love and justice at some length—a living wage, your brother’s keeper—and he did this without any sense of irony.

  Somewhere along the way Claire stopped listening because quite frankly she was not interested in his phony arguments and in fact she was not interested in him. Reginald was just like her mother, always having it both ways. Her perfect marriage and her bitchery to Claire. Her love for her husband and distinterest in her children. That’s what it meant for these fakers to walk in the way of the Lord. Some walk. Some Lord.

  Reginald had finished with the Lord by now and so Claire started in on her mother. She was selfish, she was mean in her every thought and word, she was anti-lesbian. She was a compound of all things hypocritical and frankly her scrambled eggs were always overdone. Besides, besides . . .

  “Go ahead,” he said. “Be frank.”

  This was one thing that could distract Reginald from Granny’s coming death: more dirt on the Holliss family to use in his novel.

  “Tell me about it,” he said to Claire. “Tell me everything.”

  He had no way of knowing that at this very moment in leafy, faux rustic Hillsborough, his grandmother pulled herself together and, taking a deep breath, turned toward the sunny window and, altogether satisfied, passed to her eternal reward, leaving her grandson nothing or next to nothing.

  “Tell me everything,” Reginald said again, greedy as always for tales of truth and justice.

  * * *

  —

  DAVID HAD DRIFTED OFF to sleep during the last of Will’s lectures on Yeats and now, with the arrival of Cloris and Sedge, he had begun to snore.

  “We had a great coffee, Will,” Sedge said. “Cloris is the greatest girl.”

  “He’s lovely,” Cloris said. “He’s everything you’ve always said.”

  Will was uncertain what to make of this since he had always said his brother was a shit. Period.

  David stopped snoring and opened his eyes. He saw Will standing there watching Cloris and Sedge, who looked to David’s educated eye to be in some kind of sexual thrall and he couldn’t stand it a moment longer. “Go!” he shouted. “All of you! Let me have my stroke in peace!”

  The three of them stepped out into the corridor to discuss what they should do. Call a nurse? Call a doctor? Go away, as requested?

  Sedge put his head in the door and looked at David, who was lying there quietly with his eyes shut and his hands folded on his chest, as if he were waiting for the welcome advent of an easy death.

  “He looks so peaceful,” Sedge said. “Why not just let him be?”

  They all went home to see how Maggie was getting on. This stroke business was hardest of all on her, they supposed. He was all she had.

  * * *

  —

  DAVID HAD A LIGHT TIA that evening, a kind of mini-stroke that the handsome doctor dismissed as meaningless. These things happened and they didn’t matter at all. Except sometimes when they did.

  “It’s a function of age,” he said. “You’ve earned the right to a free TIA.” He clapped David on the shoulder and assured him he could be home before the end of the week. “Good news,” he said. “Nothing but good news.”

  21.

  Sedge had put off his talk with Will until dinner was over and Maggie had left for her private visit with David—no kids allowed—and Cloris had decided on a good long soak in the bath.

  “Let’s take a walk,” Sedge said.

  “Dickens has had his walk,” Will said. “And I don’t want one.”

  Dickens thumped his tail once and gave a sigh.

  “It’s just that we should talk.”

  And so they walked and talked. Or rather Sedge talked and Will listened, with disbelief initially but with a growing sense that he was trapped by fate. This truly was outrageous. Cloris and Sedge? Sedge and Cloris? Will was—there was no other word—outraged. Talk about duplicity! Talk about betrayal! You had to go back to Greek tragedy to find a brother seducing his brother’s wife! Fiancée, rather. Will raged on and on and Sedge listened, suppressing the desire to ask which Greek tragedy Will had in mind. Wasn’t this more like a soap opera? Except of course this was real, this had already happened, this was about them. And Will had a point.

  “You’re right, Will. It’s unspeakable,” Sedge conceded, but Will raged on. H
e was exhausted finally and, giving in to the inevitable, said, “Well?”

  For the next twenty minutes Sedge presented a rational, detailed, and pragmatic account of his incipient romance with Cloris: they couldn’t help themselves, it simply happened, the question was, What Now?

  Will launched into a further burst of outrage, but the heart had gone out of him by now, and after a third outburst, Sedge managed to repeat, “You’re right, of course, Will, you’re absolutely right.” Will muttered something about betrayal and murder, but Sedge explained, “It’s just infatuation at the moment, but it promises to have all the staying power of my former marriages.”

  “Two years, you mean.”

  “At the most.”

  “And what am I supposed to do? Wait around for two years until she leaves you and decides to come back to me?”

  “That’s a crass way to put it, but as a matter of fact . . .”

  “When did all this start, anyway? You’ve only just met her.”

  “It’s simple, Will. It started very innocently on the night you arrived. She had jet lag and was reading Dad’s book on Crane and I kissed her—it was a very chaste kiss, truly—in the hallway outside the bathroom. And then we both went our ways. Just a brotherly kiss.”

  “Jesus!”

  “I don’t know why you’re so surprised. I told you when I first met her—I told you both—that I’d marry her in a minute. She’s a beauty. And with those glasses!”

  “I should phone Daphne and see how she’s doing.”

  “Just so you don’t feel betrayed. Cloris and I wouldn’t want that.”

  “Daphne says she’s mindless. Daphne says our marriage won’t last a year. Cloris and me.”

  “Maybe Daphne knows something. Maybe our whole family carries the marriage curse. A one-year limit for you. Two for me. Six months for Claire.”

  “Poor Daphne.” Will sighed in resignation. “Poor Bartleby.”

  “Who’s Bartleby?”

  “Honest to God! You’re illiterate. The whole modern world is illiterate.”

  “But are you all right?”

  “I didn’t know I was cursed, too.”

  In this way, with consideration of the marital curse and the illiteracy of the modern world, they wore themselves out. Will was for the present drained of his rage. Sedge’s sense of betrayal had scaled down to mild embarrassment. By the time they reached home, the sky was beginning to get dark and the moon came up and they were relieved that it was almost over. Whatever it was.

  22.

  The handsome doctor phoned that night to tell Maggie of David’s TIA. “Nothing to worry about. We’ll just keep watch.” So Maggie informed each of them that there would be no visiting David tomorrow. He needed rest. He needed peace. They had been sobered and solemn as they went off to bed.

  Now they were gathered together for a family breakfast and everyone had a dismal headache. Maggie had made a great stack of pancakes and a plate of bacon and there was plenty of coffee. She put the pancakes and bacon in the middle of the table and said, “I’m done,” in that tone she used when she was in a dangerous mood. Nobody spoke for a while.

  “I love American breakfasts,” Cloris said into the silence. “They’re so minimal.”

  Maggie froze, her fork poised above her plate.

  “Delicious, I mean,” Cloris said, “but without a lot of distracting things like tomatoes and baked beans and burnt bread.”

  “English breakfasts are poisonous,” Claire said. “A cup of coffee is all anybody needs.” She smiled at her mother and took another pancake. “You’re a good cooker, Misery.”

  “I didn’t mean . . .” Cloris said.

  “Let’s talk about something safe,” Will said, “let’s talk about money.”

  Everybody looked at him.

  “Nobody should ever talk about money,” Sedge said.

  “Not first thing in the morning,” Claire said.

  “My money, you mean.” Maggie corrected herself: “You mean our money. David’s and mine.”

  “Well, we’re all going to inherit it . . . eventually . . . and I could use some now.” He examined his plate closely. “I phoned Daphne last night and she’s willing to consider taking me back but she made it clear that it’s going to cost me.” He was afraid to look up. “And I’ve already put down fifty thousand pounds on that cottage for me and Cloris and I’m going to forfeit that when I withdraw my offer, so I’m in a financial bind.” He looked up at their amazed faces. “I think now is a good time to talk about what we’ll eventually get.” Silence. “I’d like to draw on a little of my share.”

  “You always were the Perfect Son,” Maggie said.

  “You really are the perfect shit,” Claire said. “At a time like this? With Misery and Poop on the edge of the big Never Never? How could you? You could at least wait till they’re dead. God! Anyhow they’ll leave us equal shares the way they always planned. Right?” She looked at Maggie. “Or whatever they decide. It’s their money.”

  “There’s just the three of us,” Will said. “I’m only saying.”

  “But then there’s Iris,” Maggie said. “Don’t forget Iris.”

  “Iris?” Will said.

  “Iris!” Claire said.

  Sedge began to hum softly. He didn’t care about money. In his experience money was best not thought about. They listened to his humming.

  “American bacon is very different to English bacon,” Cloris said.

  “Different from,” Claire said.

  “Different to,” Cloris said, and for a second that beautiful lower lip curled down in anger. “It’s a matter of choice and I’m English and I choose to.”

  Sedge looked at her in surprise. Sweet, shy Cloris could hold her own. There was always more to women than you bargained for.

  Claire said, “There are good choices and poor choices.”

  Maggie said, “I don’t think it’s good form to argue about grammar at the breakfast table.” She rose slowly. “Please rinse your dishes and put them in the dishwasher when you’re done. I’m off to visit my husband in the hospital.”

  She left but then came back for a moment. “And when you walk Dickens, whoever does it, make sure you take a plastic bag to pick up his poo.”

  * * *

  —

  WILL VOLUNTEERED TO TAKE DICKENS for his walk. The park was just a large rectangle of stubbly grass dotted here and there with dog poo and a couple of benches for you to sit on while you waited for your dog to do his business. Will hated the park but somebody had to be responsible and he, after all, as the Perfect Son, et cetera, et cetera. He had thought Cloris might join him—anything is possible—but she had other plans for the day. With Sedge.

  Beautiful, nearsighted Cloris, who only a year ago had been a different person. “You’re the perfect husband, Mr. Holliss,” Cloris had said to him after first meeting Daphne, and “You’re the perfect father, Will” after seeing him with his daughters. “You’re all I ever imagined, darling.” But by then they had become lovers. Their relationship had been complicated by the fact that Cloris had finished her coursework and for the past two years had been reading the Bloomsbury Set in hopes of finding a thesis topic that had not yet been exhausted by the Woolf industry. She had read the Woolf canon, both Virginia and Leonard. She had read all of Keynes and Forster and Strachey. She had read the endless related biographies and criticism. The Set was thrilling and suffocating at the same time, and she loved reading about them, but she could find nothing new to say. The Bloomsburys were—at least for her—spent. “I can’t do this,” she said one day in a sudden burst of tears, and Will, who had long been convinced she was right, lied and said, “Of course you can. I’ll help you. You’re just nearsighted.” Cloris, however, held on and said, “No, I like reading books but I have nothing to say about them. I’m not an academic and I never will b
e.” There was a long silence while Will dealt with her tears. “Marry me, then,” he said, and Cloris said, “Yes. And yes.”

  And now she was off with Sedge for the day and he was left with brokenhearted Daphne, who might or might not take him back and, at the moment, with a dog who wouldn’t poo.

  Cloris and Sedge! Who would believe it?

  He consoled himself that he alone among the three Holliss offspring had made an intellectual and social success of his life. He was a respected scholar and the father of three lovely girls and . . . who could say . . . soon he would once more be a loving and dutiful husband . . . hopefully . . . once Daphne got over this punitive state she was in. Dear, devoted Daphne. For the time being, she had said, he could live in the little attic room above the garage. He was convinced, however, that when he had done sufficient penance and their old kitchen was completely renovated—she had insisted on this—he would be allowed to move back into the house. He had promised that they would spend next summer in Majorca, if they could afford it. He could borrow the money if he didn’t have it at the ready, she said. And . . . and. Obviously Daphne had thought all this through and would be the dutiful put-upon faculty spouse no longer. Furthermore, she said, they needed a new downstairs bathroom. At once.

  Will felt as desolate as the dog park itself.

  Dickens, sympathetic to the end, did his poo and they turned for home.

  * * *

  —

  SEDGE AND CLORIS SPENT the day at Stanford Shopping Center, with visits to the jewelry trays at Shreve and at Gleim and for lunch at La Baguette, the little outdoor café in the courtyard. It was a perfect day for two lovers.

  At Shreve they found the loveliest engagement rings Cloris had ever seen, but they were chiefly diamond solitaires and Sedge, thinking back to his many previous engagements, said perhaps they looked too traditional. They examined different kinds of rings—diamond with sapphires, diamond with emeralds—but Sedge seemed to lack the enthusiasm that would convince Cloris to choose. So they sauntered hand in hand for a leisurely coffee at Starbucks to diminish their ocular dazzle before taking on Gleim.