Rich Man, Poor Man (61 page)

‘Leave out the church,’ Gretchen said, ‘and you’ve got a perfect description of my life, okay?’ She stood up. ‘And I’ll skip dessert. Those short, active artists of the silver screen like their women skinny.’

‘Gretchen,’ he called after her, as she strode out of the testaurant. His voice had the ring of innocent surprise. Something had just happened to him that had never happened before, that was unimaginable within the rules of the nicely regulated games he played. Gretchen didn’t look back, and

she went out the door before any of the flunkeys in the restaurant had time to push it open for her.

She walked quickly towards Fifth Avenue, then slackened her pace as her anger cooled. She was silly to have become so upset, she decided. Why should she care what Johnny Heath thought about what she was doing with her life? He pretended he liked what he considered free women because that meant he could be free with them. He had been turned away from the banquet and he was trying to make her pay for it. What could he know of what it was like for her to wake up in the morning and see Colin lying beside her? She wasn’t free of her husband and he wasn’t free of her and they were both better and more joyous human beings because of it. What crap people believed freedom to be.

She hurried to the hotel and went to her room and picked up the phone and asked the operator for her own number in Beverly Hills. It was eight o’clock in California and Colin ought to be home by now. She had to hear his voice, even though he detested talking on the phone and was most often sour and brusque on it, even with her, when she called him. But there was no answer and when she called the studio and asked them to ring the cutting room, she was told that Mr Burke had left for the night.

She hung up slowly, paced the room. Then sat down at the desk and drew out a sheet of paper and began to write: ‘Dear Colin, I called you and you weren’t home and you weren’t at the studio and I am sad and a man who once was my lover said some untrue things that bothered me and New York is too warm and Billy loves his father more than he does me and I am very unhappy without you and you should have been home and I am thinking unworthy thoughts about you and I am going down to the bar to have a drink or two drinks or three drinks and if anybody tries to pick me up I am going to call for the police and I don’t know how I’m going to live the two weeks before I see you again and I hope I didn’t sound like a conceited know-it-all about the mirror sequence and if I did forgive me and I promise not to change or reform or keep my mouth shut on the condition that you promise not to change or reform or keep your mouth shut and your collar was frayed when you took us to the airport and I am a terrible housewife, but I am a housewife, housewife, housewife, a wife in your house, the best profession in the whole world and if you’re not home the next time I call you God knows what revenge I shall prepare for you, Love, G.’

She put the letter into an airmail envelope without rereading it and went down into the lobby “and had it stamped and put it into the slot, connected by paper and ink and night-flying planes to the centre of her life three thousand miles away across the dark great continent.

Then she went into the bar and nobody tried to pick her up and she drank two whiskies without talking to the bartender. She went up and undressed and got into bed.

When she woke the next morning, it was the phone ringing that woke her and Willie was speaking, saying ‘We’ll be over to pick you up in half an hour. We’ve already had breakfast.’

Ex-husband, ex-airman Willie drove swiftly and well. The first leaves were turning towards autumn on the small lovely hills of New England as they approached the school. Willie was wearing his dark glasses again, but today against the glare of the sun on the road, not because of drink. His hands were steady on the wheel and there was none of the tell-tale shiftiness in his voice that came after a bad night. They had to stop twice because Billy got carsick, but aside from that the trip was a pleasant one, a handsome, youngish American family, comfortably off, driving in a shining new car through some of the greenest scenery in America on a sunny September day.

The school was mostly red-brick Colonial, with white pillars here and there and a few old wooden mansions scattered around the campus as dormitories. The buildings were set among old trees and widespread playing fields. As they drove up to the main building, Willie said, ‘You’re enrolling in a country club, Billy.’

, They parked the car and went up the steps to the big hall of the main building in a bustle of parents and other schoolboys. A smiling middle-aged lady was behind the desk, set up for signing in the new students. She shook their hands, said she was glad to see them, wasn’t it a beautiful day, gave Billy a coloured tag to put through his lapel, and called out, ‘David Crawford,’ towards a group of older boys with different-coloured tags in their lapels. A tall, bespectacled boy of eighteen came briskly over to the desk. The middle-aged lady made introductions all around and said, ‘William, this is David, he’ll settle you in. If you have any problems today or any time during the school year, you go right to David and pester him with them.’

‘That’s right, William,’ Crawford said. Deep, responsible

Sixth Former voice. ‘I am at your service. Where’s your gear? I’ll show you to the room.’ He led the way out of the building, the middle-aged lady already smiling behind him at another family trio at the desk.

‘William,’ Gretchen whispered as she walked behind the two boys with Willie. ‘For a minute I didn’t know whom she was talking to.’

‘It’s a good sign,’ Willie said. ‘When I went to school everybody called everybody by their last names. They were preparing us for the Army.’

Crawford insisted on carrying Billy’s bag and they crossed the campus to a three-storey red-brick building that was obviously newer than most of the other structures surrounding it

‘Sillitoe Hall,’ Crawford said, as they went in. ‘You’re on the third floor, William.’

There was a plaque just inside the doorway announcing that the dormitory was the gift of Robert Sillitoe, father of Lieutenant Robert Sillitoe, Jr., Class of 1938, fallen in the service of his country, August 6th, 1944.

Gretchen was sorry she had seen the plaque, but took heart from the sound of young male voices singing from the other rooms and the pounding of jazz groups from phonographs, all very much alive, as she climbed the stairs behind Crawford and Billy.

The room assigned to Billy wasn’t large, but it was furnished with two cots, two small desks, and two wardrobes. The small trunk they had sent ahead with Billy’s belongings was under one of the cots and there was another trunk tagged Fournier next to the window.

‘Your roommate’s already here,’ Crawford said. ‘Have you met Mm yet?’

‘No,’ Billy said. He seemed very subdued, even for him, and Gretchen hoped that Fournier, whoever he was, would not turn out to be a bully of a pederast or a marijuana smoker. She felt suddenly helpless - a life was out of her hands.

‘You’ll see him at lunch,’ Crawford said. ‘You’ll hear the bell any minute now.’ He smiled his sober responsible smile at Willie and Gretchen. ‘Of course, all parents are invited, Mrs Abbott.’

She caught the agonised glance from Billy, saying plainly, Not now, please! and she checked the correction before it crossed her lips. Time enough for Billy to explain that his father was Mr Abbot but his mother was called Mrs Burke.

Not the first day. Thank you, David,’ she said, her voice unsteady in her own ears. She looked at Willie. He was shaking his head. ‘It’s very kind of the school to invite us,’ she said.

Crawford gestured at the bare, unmade cot. ‘I advise you to get three blankets, William,’ he said. The nights up here get beastly cold and they’re Spartan about heat. They think freezing is good for our unfolding characters.’

‘I’ll send you the blankets from New York today,’ Gretchen said. She turned towards Willie. ‘Now about lunch…’

‘You’re not hungry, are you dear?’ Willie’s voice was pleading, and Gretchen knew that the last thing Willie wanted was to eat lunch in a school dining-room, without a drink in sight.

‘Not really,’ Gretchen said, pitying him.

‘Anyway, I have to get back to town by four o’clock,’ Willie said. ‘I have an appointment that’s very…’ His voice trailed off unconvincingly.

There was a booming of bells and Crawford said, There it is. The dining-room is just behind the desk where you signed in, William. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to wash up. And remember - anything you need.’ Upright and gentlemanly in his blazer and scuffed white shoes, a credit to the three years of schooling behind him, he went into the corridor, still resounding with the clashing melodies from three different phonographs, Elvis Presley’s wail, frantic and forlorn, dominating.

‘Well,’ Gretchen said, ‘he does seem like an awfully nice boy, doesn’t he?’

‘I’ll wait and see what he’s like when you’re not around,’ Billy said, ‘and tell you.’

I guess you’d better get over for your lunch,’ Willie said. Gretchen could tell he was panting for the first drink of the day. He had been very good about not suggesting stopping at any of the roadhouses they had passed on the way up and he had been a proper father all morning. He had earned his martini.

‘We’ll walk you over to the dining room,’ Gretchen said. She wanted to cry, but of course she couldn’t, in front of Billy. She looked erratically around the room. ‘When you and your roommate do a little decorating here,’ she said, this place ought to be very cosy. And you do have a pretty view.’ Abruptly, she led the way into the hall.

They crossed the campus, along with other small groups converging on the main building. Gretchen stopped some distance from the steps. The moment had come to say goodbye and she didn’t want to have to do it in the middle of the

herd of boys and parents at the foot of the steps.

Well,’ she said, ‘we might as well do it here.’

Billy put his arms around her and kissed her brusquely. She managed a smile. Billy shook his father’s hand. Thanks for driving me up,’ he said evenly, to both of them. Then dry-eyed he turned and walked, not hurrying, towards the steps, joining in the stream of students, lost, gone, a thin, gangling, childish figure departed irrevocably for that budding company of men where mother’s voices which had comforted and lullabyed and admonished were now and forever heard only from afar.

Through a haze of tears she watched him vanish through the white pillars, the open doors, out of sunlight into shadow. Willie put his arm around her and, grateful for the touch of each other’s body, they walked toward the car. They drove down the winding drive, along the tree-shaded street that bordered the school’s playing fields, deserted now of athletes, goals undefended, base paths clear of runners.

She sat in the seat beside Willie staring straight ahead. She heard a curious sound from Willie’s side of the car and he stopped the car under a tree. Willie was sobbing uncontrollably and now she couldn’t hold it back any more and she clutched him and, their arms around each other, they wept and wept, for Billy, and the life ahead of him, for Robert” Sillitoe, Jr., for themselves, for love, for Mrs Abbott, for Mrs Burke, for all the whiskey, for all their mistakes, for the flawed life behind them.

‘Just don’t pay any attention to me,’ the girl with the cameras was saying to Rudolph as Gretchen and Johnny Heath got out of the car and walked across the parking lot to where Rudolph was standing under the huge sign that traced the name of Calderwood against the blue September sky. It was the opening day of the new shopping centre on the Northern outskirts of Port Philip, a neighbourhood that Gretchen knew well, because it was on the road that led, a few miles farther on, to the Boylan estate.

Gretchen and Johnny had missed the opening ceremony because Johnny couldn’t break loose from his office until lunchtime. Johnny had been apologetic about that, as he had been apologetic about his conversation at dinner two nights before, and the drive up had been a friendly one, Johnny had done most of the talking, but not about himself or Gretchen. He had spent the time explaining admiringly the mechanics of Rudolph’s rise as an entrepreneur and manager. According

to Johnny, Rudolph understood the complexities of modern business better than any man his age Johnny had ever come across. When Johnny tried to explain what a brilliant coup Rudolph had pulled off last year in getting Calderwood to agree to buy a firm that had shown a two-million-dollar loss in the last three years, she had to admit to him that he had finally taken her beyond her intellectual depth, but that she would accept his opinion of the deal on faith.

When Gretchen came to where Rudolph was standing, making notes on a pad on a clipboard he was carrying, the photographer was crouched a few feet in front of him, shooting upwards, to get the Calderwood sign in behind him. Rudolph smiled widely when he saw her and Johnny and moved towards them to greet them. Dealer in millions, juggler with stock options, disposer of risk capital, he merely looked like her brother to Gretchen, a well-tanned, handsome young man in a nicely tailored, unremarkable suit She was struck once against by the difference between her brother and her husband. From what Johnny had told her she knew that Rudolph was many times wealthier than Colin and wielded infinitely more real power over a much greater number of people, but nobody, not even his own mother, would ever accuse Colin of being modest. In any group, Colin stood out, arrogant and commanding, ready to make enemies. Rudolph blended into groups, affable and pliant, certain to make friends.

‘That’s good,’ the crouching girl said, taking one picture after another. ‘That’s very good.’

‘Let me introduce you,’ Rudolph said. ‘My sister, Mrs Burke, my associate, Mr Heath. Miss … uh … Miss… I’m terribly sorry.’

‘Prescott,’ the girl said. ‘Jean will do. Please don’t pay any attention to me.’ She stood up and smiled, rather shyly. She was a small girl with straight, long, brown hair, caught in a bow at the nape of her neck. She was freckled and unmade-up and she moved easily, even with the three cameras hanging from her, and the heavy film case slung from her shoulder.