Rich Man, Poor Man (8 page)

‘Do you know a place called The Farmer’s Inn?’ Boylan asked as he started the car.

‘I’ve heard of it,’ she said. It was a small hotel on a bluff above the river about fifteen miles farther on and supposed to be very expensive.

‘It’s not a bad little joint,’ Boylan said. ‘You can get a decent bottle of wine.’

There was no more conversation because he drove very fast and the wind roared across the open car, making her squint against the pressure on her eyes and swirling her hair. The wartime speed limit was supposed to be only thirty-five miles an hour, to conserve gasoline, but of course a man like Mr Boylan didn’t have to worry about things like gasoline.

From time to time, Boylan looked oyer at her and smiled a little. The smile was ironical, she felt, and had to do with the fact that she was sure he knew she had been lying about her reasons for being alone so far from town, waiting senselessly for a bus that wouldn’t arrive for another half-hour. He leaned over and opened the glove case and brought out a pair of dark Air Force glasses and handed them to her. ‘For your pretty, blue eyes,’ he shouted, over the wind. She put the glasses on and felt very dashing, like an actress in the movies.

The Farmer’s Inn had been a relay house in the post-colonial days when travel between New York and upstate had been by stage coach. It was painted red with white trim and there was a large wagon wheel propped up on the lawn. It proclaimed the owner’s belief that Americans liked to dine in their past It could have been a hundred miles or a hundred years away from Port Philip.

Gretchen combed her hair into some sort of order, using the rearview mirror. She was uncomfortable and conscious of Boylan watching her. ‘One of the nicest things a man can see in this life,’ he said, ‘is a pretty girl with her arms up, combing her hair. I suppose that’s why so many painters have painted it.’

She was not used to talk like that from anv of the boys who

had gone through high school with her or who hung around her desk at the office and she didn’t know whether she liked it or not. It seemed to invade her privacy, talk like that. She hoped she wasn’t going to blush any more that afternoon. She started to put on some lipstick, but he reached out and stopped her. ‘Don’t do that,’ he said authoritatively. ‘You’ve got enough on. More than enough. Come.’ He leaped out of the car, with surprising agility, she thought, for a man that age and came around and opened the door for her.

Manners, she noted automatically. She followed him from the parking lot, where there were five or six other cars ranged under the trees, towards the entrance to the hotel. His brown shoes, well they weren’t really shoes (jodhpur boots, she was later to discover they were called), were highly shined, as usual. He was wearing a houndstooth tweed jacket, and grey flannel slacks, and a scarf at the throat of his soft wool shirt, instead of a tie. He’s not real, she thought, he’s out of a magazine. What am I doing with him?

Beside him, she felt dowdy and clumsy in the short-sleeved navy-blue dress that she had taken so much care to choose that morning. She was sure he was already sorry he had stopped for her. But he held the door open for her and touched her elbow helpfully as she passed in front of him into the bar.

There were two other couples in the bar, which was decorated like an eighteenth-century tap room, all dark oak and pewter mugs and plates. The two women were youngish and wore suede skirts with tight, flat jerseys and spoke in piercing, confident voices. Looking at them, Gretchen was conscious of the gaudiness of her own bosom and hunched over to minimise it The couples were seated at a low table at the other end of the room and Boylan guided Gretchen to the bar and helped her sit on one of the heavy, high, wooden stools. ‘This end,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Get away from those ladies. They make a music I can do without’

A Negro in a starched white jacket came to take their order. ‘Afternoon, Mr Boylan,’ the Negro said soberly. ‘What is your pleasure, sir?’

‘Ah, Bernard,’ Boylan said, ‘you ask the question that has stumped philosophers since the beginning of time.’

Phoney, Gretchen thought She was a little shocked that she could think it about a man like Mr Boylan.

The Negro smiled dutifully. He was as neat and spotless as if. he were ready to conduct an operation. Gretchen looked at

him sideways. I know two friends of yonrs not far from here.

she thought, who aren’t giving anybody any pleasure this afternoon.

‘My dear,’ Boylan turned to her, ‘what do you drink?’

‘Anything. Whatever you say.’ The traps were multiplying. How did she know what she drank? She never drank anything stronger than Coke. She dreaded the arrival of the menu. Almost certainly in French. She had taken Spanish and Latin in school. Latin!

‘By the way,’ Boylan said, ‘you are over eighteen.’

‘Oh, yes,’ she said. She blushed. What a silly time to blush. Luckily it was dark in the bar.

‘I wouldn’t want to be dragged into court for leading minors into corruption,’ he said, smiling. He had nice, well-cared-for dentist’s teeth. It was hard to understand why a man who looked like that, with teeth like that and such elegant clothes, and all that money, would ever have to have lunch alone.

‘Bernard, let’s try something sweet. For the young lady. A nice Daiquiri, in your inimitable manner.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ Bernard said.

Inimitable, she thought. Who uses words like that? Her sense of being the wrong age, wrongly dressed, wrongly made-up, made her hostile.

Gretchen watched Bernard squeeze the limes and toss in the ice and shake the drink, with expert, manicured black-and-pink hands. Adam and Even in the Garden. If Mr Boylan had had an inkling … There wouldn’t be any of that condescending talk about corruption.

The frothy drink was delicious and she drank it like lemonade. Boylan watched her, one eye raised, a little theatrically, as the drink disappeared.

‘Once again, please, Bernard,’ he said.

The two couples went into the dining room and they had the bar to themselves, as Bernard prepared the second round. She felt more at ease now. The afternoon was opening up. She didn’t know why those were the words that occurred to her, but that’s the way it seemed - opening up. She was going to sit at many dark bars and many kindly older men in peculiar clothes were going to buy her delicious drinks.

Bernard put the drink in front of her.

‘May I make a suggestion, pet?’ Boylan said. ‘I’d drink this one more slowly, if I were you. There is rum in them, after all.’

‘Of course,’ she said, with dignity. ‘I guess I was thirsty, standing out there in the hot sun.’

Pet. Nobody had ever called her anything like that. She liked the word, especially the way he said it, in that cool, un-pushy voice. She took little ladylike sips of the cold drink. It was as good as the first one. Maybe even better. She was beginning to feel that she wasn’t going to blush any more that afternoon.

Boylan called for the menu. They would order in the bar while they were finishing their drinks. The head waiter came in with two large, stiff cards, and said, bowing a little, ‘Glad to see you again, Mr Boylan.’

Everybody was glad to see Mr Boylan, in his shiny shoes.

‘Should I order?’ Boylan asked her.

Gretchen knew, from the movies, that gentlemen often ordered for ladies in restaurants, but it was one thing to see it on the screen and another thing to have it happen right in front of you. ‘Please do,’ she said. Right out of the book, she thought triumphantly. My, the drink was good.

There was a brief but serious discussion about the menu and the wine between Mr Boylan and the head waiter. The head waiter disappeared, promising to call them when their table was ready. Mr Boylan took out a gold cigarette case and offered her a cigarette. She shook her head.

‘You don’t smoke?’

‘No.’ She felt that she was not living up to the level of the place and the rules of the situation by not smoking, but she had tried two or three times and it had made her cough and go red eyed and she had given up the experiment. Also, her mother smoked, day and night, and anything her mother did Gretchen didn’t want to do.

‘Good,’ Boylan said, lighting his cigarette with a gold lighter he took from his pocket and put down on the bar beside the monogrammed case. ‘I don’t like girls to smoke. It takes away the fragrance of youth.’

Fancy talk, she thought. But it didn’t offend her now. He was putting himself out to please her. She was suddenly conscious of the odour of the perfume that she had dabbed on herself in the washroom at the office. She worried that it might seem cheap to him. ‘I must say,’ she said, I was surprised you knew my name.’

‘Why?’

“Well, I don’t think I’ve seen you more than once or twice at the Works. And you never come through the office.’

I’ve seen you,’ he said. ‘I wondered what a girl who looked

like you was doing in a dreary place like Boylan’s Brick and Tile Works.’

‘It isn’t as awful as all that,’ she said defensively. ‘No? I’m glad to hear that. I was under the impression that all my employees found it intolerable. I make it a point not to visit it more than fifteen minutes a month. I find it depresses me.’

The head waiter appeared. ‘Ready now, sir.’

‘Leave your drink, pet,’ Boylan said, helping her off her stool. ‘Bernard’ll bring it in.’

They followed the head waiter into the dining-room. Eight or ten of the tables were occupied. A full colonel and a party of young officers. Other tweedy couples. There were flowers on the polished fake-colonial tables and rows of shining glasses. There is nobody here who makes less than ten thousand dollars a year, she thought.

The conversation in the room dropped as they followed the head waiter to a small table at the window, overlooking the river far below. She felt the young officers regarding her. She touched her hair. She knew what was going on in their minds. She was sorry Mr Boylan wasn’t younger.

The head waiter held the chair for her and she sat down and put the large, creamy napkin demurely over her lap. Bernard came in with their unfinished Daiquiris on a tray and put them down on the table.

“Thank you, sir,’ he said as he backed off.

The head waiter appeared with a bottle of red wine from France and a table waiter came up with their first course. There was no manpower shortage at The Old Farmer’s Inn.

The head waiter ceremoniously poured a little-of the wine into a huge, deep glass. Boylan sniffed it, tasted it, looked up, squinting, at the ceiling, as he kept it for a moment in his mouth before swallowing. He nodded at the head waiter. ‘Very good Lawrence,’ he said.

Thank you, sir,’ the head waiter said. With all those thank yous, Gretchen thought, the bill was going to be horrendous.

The head waiter poured the wine into her glass, then into Boylan’s. Boylan raised his glass to her and they both sipped the wine. It had a strange dusty taste and was warm. Eventually, she was sure, she was going to learn to like that taste.

‘I hope you like hearts of palm,’ Boylan said. ‘I developed the taste in Jamaica. That was before the war, of course.’

‘It’s delicious.’ It tasted like a flat nothing to her, but she liked the idea that a whole noble palm tree had been cut down

just to serve her one small, delicate dish.

“When the war is over,’ he said, picking at his plate, ‘I’m going to go down there and settle. Jamaica. Just lie on the white sand in the sun from year’s end to year’s end. When the boys come marching home this country’s going to be impossible. A world fit for heroes to live in,’ he said mockingly, ‘is hardly fit for Theodore Boylan to live in. You must come and visit me.’

‘Sure,’ she said. ‘I’ll rhumba on down on my salary from the Boylan Brick and Tile Works.’

He laughed. ‘It is the proud boast of my family,’ he said, ‘that we have underpaid our help since 1887.’

‘Family?’ she said. As far as she knew, he was the only Boylan extant. It was common knowledge that he lived alone in the mansion behind the stone wails of the great estate outside town. With servants, of course.

‘Imperial,’ he said. ‘We are spread in our glory from coast to coast, from pine-clad Maine to orange-scented California. Aside from the Boylan Cement plant and the Boylan Brick and Tile Works in Port Philip, there are Boylan shipyards, Boylan oil companies, Boylan heavy-duty machinery plants throughout the length and breadth of this great land, each with a Boylan brother or uncle or cousin at its head, supplying the sinews of war at cost-plus to our beloved country. There is even a Major General Boylan who strikes shrewd blows in his nation’s cause in the Service of .Supply in Washington. Family? Let there be the sniff of a dollar in the air and there you will find a Boylan, first on the line.’

She was not used to people running down their own families; her loyalties were simple. Her face must have shown her disappointment.

‘You’re shocked,’ Boylan said. Again that crooked look of amusement.

‘Not really,’ she said. She thought of her own family. ‘Only people inside a family know how much love they deserve.’

‘Oh, I’m not all bad,’ Boylan said ‘There’s one virtue which my family has in abundance and I admire it without reservation.’

‘What’s that?’

They’re rich. They’re verrry, verrry rich.’ He laughed.

‘Still,’ she said hoping that he wasn’t as bad as he sounded, that it was just a show-off lunchtime act that he was performing to impress an empty-headed girl, “still, you work. The Boylans’ve done a lot for this town….’

“They certainly have,’ he said. They have bled it white. Naturally, they feel a sentimental interest in it Port Philip is the most insignificant of the imperial possessions, not worth the time of a true, one hundred per cent, up-and-at-em male Boylan, but they do not abandon it. The last and least of the line, your humble servant, is delegated to the lowly home province to lend the magic of the name and the authority of the living family presence at least once or twice a month to the relic. I perform my ritual duties with all due respect and look forward to Jamaica when the guns have fallen silent’

He not only hates the family, she thought, he hates himself.