Matters of Honor (8 page)

Fresh martini in hand, I threaded my way toward George. It took him a moment to see me. As soon as he did, he exclaimed with a look of pleasant surprise—I hoped it was in some part genuine—over the remarkable coincidence of finding me at this party given by people he didn’t know and introduced me to Margot as his cousin. She mumbled some greeting, not particularly friendly. Without paying further attention to her, George told me that he had wanted us to get together right away, at the beginning of the term, but, with one thing and another and particularly crew practice, he hadn’t gotten around to looking me up. I responded with assurances that he had been much on my mind and that, having made the freshman wrestling team, I understood the demands the crew made on him. Then Mario joined us. This was a good opportunity to bring Henry over. My two roommates are here, I told George. I’d like you to meet them.

In fact, I brought only Henry. As soon as she saw him, Margot came to life. She held out her arms crying out, At last, here is the boy in the window! This is too funny. I made a spectacle of myself trying to pick him up and he paid no attention! It was very humiliating, she concluded.

I couldn’t tell whether her greeting embarrassed Henry or encouraged him. In either event, he didn’t need me. Planning to remain at the party only a few more minutes before going to dinner, just to make sure that Henry was really all right, I moved back to the window. George disengaged his arm from Margot’s and followed me.

You know, he said, when I told you that I wanted to look you up I meant it. We should be friends. I have only one Standish cousin, and that’s you.

Strictly speaking that wasn’t quite right. He had two older first cousins, daughters of his father’s sister. I was only a second cousin. Their name wasn’t Standish, but they were closer relations. Still, it would have been churlish to contradict him.

Pittsfield is a funny place, he continued, referring to the town where the bank had its head office. So are Stockbridge and Lenox. Knowing Father, I’m sure he wouldn’t want people at the bank to think that he was treating your old man differently from everybody else, so I bet he makes sure he’s all business with him. But that has nothing to do with you and me. We should be friends.

My astonishment was considerable. All through my childhood, I had thought that such a thing was impossible. When we were at the same day school, I went to his birthday parties because his mother invited the whole class. The invitations naturally stopped when we went to different boarding schools. Now he was taking the first step. I couldn’t imagine what lay behind this overture. Remarkable discretion on the part of the Standish parents about mine, as well as about the adoption? It was, of course, possible that Mr. Hibble had told the truth, and no one really knew, except for my parents and him. And the Standish grandfather who was my benefactor. What could George possibly like about me? I could think of nothing. Perhaps some well-disposed person had said something favorable that caught his imagination. Or was he acting out of a sense of noblesse oblige? It occurred to me that, if a true friendship developed, I would need to tell him I had been adopted. It would be wrong to conceal it from someone who cared so much about family ties. But that could wait. I said that I would like nothing better than to be friends. Then I added Margot seems nice.

I like her a lot, he told me. If I can get her up to Stockbridge for the New Year’s dance, you’ll have to come too.

After we said goodbye, I found Mario and thanked him. I couldn’t find Archie. Margot and Henry were still where I had left them. I thought I wouldn’t disturb them. With luck, I could still get something to eat at the Freshman Union. I walked fast toward Quincy Street.

VII

A
BIG WINTER STORM
hit after Christmas, knocking down power lines in western Massachusetts and parts of Connecticut and New York, and blowing snowdrifts across many roads. In some places it took several days to dig out, and crews worked around the clock to restore electricity and telephone service. Like everyone brought up in the Berkshires, George thought nothing of driving in the worst of winter conditions and was determined to go down to New York in the family station wagon. He would spend the night with his aunt and bring Margot and Henry to Stockbridge. Far from objecting, his parents thought this was a splendid plan, his father counseling him only to throw a spare set of chains in the back of the station wagon, just in case. Mrs. Hornung, however, vetoed the project. She decreed that if Margot really had to go to a dance in the Berkshires, she would go by train, the more sensible idea being for George to come to the party she and her husband gave every New Year’s Eve at their apartment in New York. There would be dancing, and George was welcome to bring friends. Her decision put an end to Henry’s row with his parents over the prospect of his driving off with George into the storm. In the plan finally adopted, the Berkshire dance prevailed over the Hornungs’ entertainment. Margot and Henry would take the train due in Stockbridge at three in the afternoon on New Year’s Eve and, at Margot’s insistence, Henry would stay at George’s house, rather than with me as I had proposed. Not being very confident about my parents in the role of hosts during that particular holiday, I had been glad to yield. All the same, I went to the station with George to discharge at least some of my duties as roommate. There was no attendant on duty; there hadn’t been one in Stockbridge for a long time. We waited some fifteen minutes, and then, the pay phone being broken, I remained on the platform, so that I would be on hand to greet Henry and Margot if the train suddenly appeared while George drove to a nearby gas station on Route 7 and called down the line to stations in the state of New York where there was a chance that someone might be on duty. It was as we had expected. Switches kept on freezing up. It might be an hour or more before Henry and Margot arrived or it could be less. As they would be unable to call, we stayed at the station.

Since Mario’s party, I had run across Margot only in the Yard and in the street. We would wave and say hello, but in spite of my growing curiosity about her, we didn’t stop to talk. Henry came back to the dormitory late the night of that party. He said he was frozen stiff. Archie was still out and I had just about finished my reading. As Henry hadn’t eaten, I suggested that we go out for a hamburger. He refused, protesting that he was tired and too cold to go out again, but in the end he agreed. The wind had turned into a gale and, for a Saturday night of the Yale game weekend, the Yard and the streets abutting on Harvard Square were surprisingly empty. There wasn’t even the usual gang of townies waiting outside Elsie’s on Mount Auburn Street to bait unwary undergraduates. I let Henry eat in silence. We were having a second cup of coffee when I asked what had happened at the party after I left. Nothing, he replied. Margot introduced George and him to Mario. George drifted off to greet some other people, leaving him and Margot. They got to have a long talk. At some point, George came over and said, Let’s go and eat, and he and Margot left for a restaurant in the North End. George had been very polite, asking Henry to join them. He declined, not wanting to impose. By then the dining room at the Union would have closed, and he didn’t feel like dinner anyway. So he walked along the Charles on the Cambridge side all the way to Harvard Bridge. There he crossed over to Boston, wandering around for a while in Back Bay. He followed the Storrow Drive to Cambridge, went back to Harvard Square, and poked around Brattle Street and Spark Street. Beautiful houses, he said. I wouldn’t mind living in one of them.

I was right not to go to the restaurant, he added. Your cousin George was nice enough to leave me alone with Margot the better part of an hour. He didn’t need my presence at dinner. She was his date, right? The evening was his. Anyway, that will be the pattern. I might as well get used to it.

I must have looked puzzled. It’s simple, Henry said, she’s exactly the sort of girl they all want to take out, those men at the party, and George is exactly the sort of man she thinks should take her out. Maybe she even expects someone even fancier. I don’t qualify. On the other hand, she told me that she hasn’t got much to say to them, not that they would necessarily want to listen. So we can talk to each other. That’s my role—she made it very clear.

I wouldn’t have predicted for Henry a role as Margot’s confidant. In all other respects, that was also my assessment. It led me to think that he should stop wasting time on his Jazz Age Penthesilea and also on the dogs he had been consoling himself with. There were lots of attractive girls at Radcliffe who would be happy to have him. Some might even be Jewish. Of course, I didn’t tell him any of that. Instead I complimented him on his realism and willingness to accept the situation with good cheer.

Good cheer? he answered. Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve been dealt a lousy hand. I know it, and I don’t find anything in it to be cheerful about. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not giving up on Margot. This is a tactical retreat in a long campaign. For now, my plan is to be her friend. Whatever happens and whatever she does with the others, I’ll bide my time.

That statement didn’t reassure me. I had taken a good look at Margot and the other girls at Mario’s. If he really thought that in time he would be able to get Margot away from the Georges and Marios of this world, he was only setting himself up for more disappointments. I knew I was changing my tune, but that couldn’t be helped. In fact, I was beginning to think that perhaps Archie and I had made a mistake arranging the chance encounter at Mario’s as though it were just another undergraduate lark. At the same time, something made me go on; I couldn’t stop meddling. I asked whether he shouldn’t put the matter to a test by asking her for a date.

She’d send me packing, he said. That would spoil everything.

Why? Do you think that she is an anti-Semite? I asked him point-blank. Is that the problem? Because if she is, what would make her change?

Isn’t everybody? he fired back.

I don’t think so, I replied. I’m not, Archie isn’t, there are lots of people who don’t care whether you’re Jewish.

I’m not so sure, Henry said. Anyway, you haven’t been put to any test. Sure, you and Archie don’t seem to mind having had a Jew foisted on you. But in other contexts, who is to say? You seem positively fixated on the Jewish question. In changed circumstances it might turn out that you care a lot. Anyway, I do know that there are Jews and Jews, and that some Jews are acceptable for most purposes, except to real nuts, and others aren’t. Margot’s father and Margot are class A Jews. I’m class B—for the time being. I want to move to A.

Though a bit put off by his hostility, I wished him luck.

In the meantime, I watched him go about being Margot’s best friend and must say I admired his eerie efficiency. I doubt that a single day went by without their meeting for coffee or tea at Hayes-Bickford between morning classes as well as in the afternoon, after leaving the library. He avoided Leavitt & Pierce’s because there you had to sit at the counter, so that real privacy was excluded. Besides, it was where “they” hung out, the golden lads and lassies. Most days, Margot and he read side by side at the Widener. When she had to use the Radcliffe library, needing a book on reserve there, he would wait outside and walk her back to her dormitory. Occasionally, they went to the movies. George wasn’t much of a cinema buff and, what with crew training and homework—he was a diligent student who read slowly, took careful notes on what he read, and fretted about deadlines for handing in papers—he was usually pressed for time. Margot, I gathered, worked quickly but without much application. According to Henry, she had been so well prepared by her school in New York that she found no need to take much trouble over her courses. I would have liked to know what Henry and Margot actually talked about. Books and coursework? Was he more open with her about Poland and the war? He gave no hint of that, but I did learn that George was not the only man who took Margot out on what Henry called real dates. There was also a Belgian at the business school, a rich fellow given to rushing to New York whenever Margot went home. He is an international playboy, Henry explained, manifestly parroting Margot’s words, not a typical business school grind. George was aware of the Belgian and bore his attentions to Margot stoically. Tolerant equanimity seemed, indeed, to be George’s hallmark in his relationship with Margot. Henry told me, with needless indiscretion, that Margot had explained the strict limits on liberties George could take with her person, and that George had placidly accepted them. Perhaps crew’s rigorous training regime and the saltpeter which, according to rumor, was added to the special diet fed to top athletes facilitated his acceptance. Henry seemed to know that the Belgian pressed his suit with greater fire. George was also notably easygoing about Henry and, at least according to Margot, it was George who had come up with the idea of inviting him to the New Year’s party at the Lenox Driving Club. Your invitation, Henry assured me, was also something George had thought of on his own. I had no reason to doubt the accuracy of the latter statement, since he had spoken about inviting me already at Mario’s party. And yet that harmless comment provoked in me an ugly movement of jealousy—I considered that Henry belonged to me as did also the connection with George and the Berkshires, and momentarily I disliked the alliance that had sprung up between those two without my active participation. I wondered how much Margot’s influence had had to do with the invitation to Henry. A lot, I was inclined to think, although George had spoken to me favorably about Henry soon after they met at Mario’s. That roommate of yours with the funny accent is all right, he said. Margot thinks he’s remarkable. I acquiesced in both judgments. You know, I think he may be a Jew, George pursued. Seeing no reason to feign ignorance, I said he was. So he’s a Jew, George repeated pensively. I didn’t take that as an indication that he was taken aback by the information. It just took a moment to make sense of the new fact. The parents won’t mind, he continued. He’s very polite, and he can talk to Mother about books. Thinking of my father’s strictures about Jews at our own country club and old Gummy’s views, I asked George how he thought Henry would go over with the seniors at the very grand Driving Club. It was not by choice that my parents weren’t members there. I don’t care what those mummies think, he replied. The parents don’t either. I absorbed George’s statement in silence. Once again he showed himself to be a far more decent fellow than I had imagined. There was another aspect of his reply that was worthy of note: clearly setting yourself against the opinions of others was easier if you were rich and occupied an impregnable social position.

Like Henry, I had unexpectedly every reason to think well of George. He followed up on what I had feared might have been perfunctory party talk and invited me the very next day to lunch at the Chinese restaurant on Oxford Street. We began to see each other regularly, especially as we were taking the same English literature course, and he had trouble with the required weekly essay. Often, he wanted to see me to ask for my help with what he had written. Otherwise, we gossiped about the Berkshires. We knew the same people, although sometimes from different perspectives. I decided I had better tell him what Mr. Hibble had said about my adoption. George shook his head and said, Hibble is a lunatic. I mean senile. That’s what Father thinks, and he should know. Hibble does all the legal work for the family.

I told George that my father would be glad to hear about Mr. Standish’s opinion of Mr. Hibble, but my parents had confirmed the story. It had to be true. George fell silent. I am trying to think this out, he said after a while. There is something fishy about it, my grandfather stepping in like that. And setting up a trust! I think I see it. My sisters are older than I am and you are a year younger. That makes it simple: by the time you were born, Mother and Father had been married for six or seven years. Grandfather wasn’t more than sixty-five, maybe younger, and he was in fine health. Hey, you might be my uncle! My sisters’ and my uncle! Unless you’re our half brother. Mother always says that Father was wild before they got married. Perhaps he hadn’t stopped. How about that?

I told George that for a while after the meeting with Mr. Hibble I had thought of very little except the adoption, and the conclusion I’d come to was that there was no reason to believe anything of that sort. Abortions were easy to arrange, I said, if you had money. That’s what would have been done in your family. More than likely some young woman your grandfather knew—perhaps an employee at the bank, perhaps the daughter of an employee, perhaps a servant, perhaps the daughter of a friend—anyway, some girl he knew got into trouble and it was too late to fix it. So your grandfather stepped in generously and solved the girl’s problem. At the same time he did his nephew and the nephew’s wife a great big favor.

Could be, said George. But the family resemblance?

I replied that it extended to half of the Anglo-Scottish population of the Berkshires, there being nothing especially distinctive about the Standish looks. In any case, he could be sure of one thing: it wasn’t his father. He had never paid attention to me, one way or the other, and although he seemed to know who I was, I would bet he couldn’t remember my name.

We agreed that we wouldn’t be solving the riddle. When I suggested that it might be better not to know the answer, he said that was all right with him, but he might start thinking of me as a kid brother anyway—it seemed more natural than uncle. We also agreed on a point of practical importance: we would not mention our conversation to anyone, his parents and sisters and my parents included. He was very solemn about it, which was a relief, and not only because I had given my word to Mr. Hibble. Speaking to George was justified; it was only fair if we were to be friends. But neither of us wanted to make trouble with his parents—if they really didn’t know—or mine, or get the Berkshire gossip mill started.