The Last Summer of the Camperdowns (10 page)

Chapter Nine

A
FEW DAYS LATER, I AWOKE TO THE HOSTILE RAT-A-TAT-TAT
of my parents fighting in the bedroom below. I pulled a blanket up around my head to block their increasingly shrill back-and-forth even as I strained to hear what was being said. They were arguing about money and about my father’s decision to fly to Saigon. Knowing him as I did, I thought he might have signed up for a tour of duty, but in fact he was helping to organize, along with a number of prominent Democrats, including senators and members of Congress, an independent fact-finding mission concerning what happened in Trang Bang. My mother said we couldn’t afford to finance the cost of his unnecessary involvement.

“What about the election?” she demanded. “Do you really expect me to campaign in your absence? I’ve seen one supermarket. I don’t intend to see another.” Her voice registered disbelief and anger in even proportions.

“Thanks for your unstinting support. I can always count on you to put yourself ahead of any and every other consideration. Anyway, there are more important things to consider here than shaking hands. I can miss a few chicken dinners, and if my candidacy can’t survive my temporary absence,” he fired back, “to hell with it.”

Drawing the cover away from my face and blinking in the streaming sunshine, my respect for my father propped me up like a pillow.

“Oh, I know, you have whole worlds to save. What would posterity do without you? What about your family?” my mother said, going for the low blow. “What about Riddle and me? We have every cent tied up in this stupid campaign. I don’t want to even think about the debt . . .”

“So like you to put a price tag on my role as father and husband,” my father retaliated, almost shouting.

“Won’t you reconsider, Camp?” She retreated slightly, knowing that she had taken the wrong tack, bringing up money. “I don’t know . . .” She paused, uncharacteristically subdued. “This thing with the Devlin boy still missing is a little unsettling. No one knows where he is or what’s happened to him. For all we know there could be some lunatic on the loose.”

“You can’t be serious! You expect me to put everything on hold because fifteen-year-old Charlie Devlin is off raising hell somewhere? If this was any kid other than Michael’s it wouldn’t even be a blip on the radar. Frankly, I couldn’t be less interested in anything that has to do with Michael Devlin, though obviously the same can’t be said for you. In any event, I feel quite confident leaving you alone. In a contest between you and a lunatic, God help the lunatic.”

I was sitting on the edge of the bed, bare feet dangling, relieved that the conversation had veered away from the always explosive topic of money, when Greer decided to venture into even more fraught territory. “Why can’t you be more moderate? You’ve already made up your mind about Michael’s boy though you haven’t a single fact to support your conclusions. God knows, you’ve made your views on the war abundantly clear. By now, Ho Chi Minh must be ready to surrender rather than listen to another word on the subject from you. How far do you intend to go? Isn’t it enough that you wave the union label at every opportunity? You live and breathe controversy. It’s like a shtick. Why must you be so adversarial? Sometimes I feel as if we’re chained to Krakatoa, waiting for the inevitable explosion.”

“That’s a hot one coming from you, Miss Congeniality. Is that your idea of a joke? Don’t be so goddamn melodramatic. Why the hell would I run for office if I didn’t have something to say?”

My mother laughed. Idealism amused her, or so she pretended. “Save it for those gullible legions of factory workers. Do everyone a favor and quit deluding yourself about the purity of your motives. No saint ever survived the election process.” Her words sounded dirty, as if she’d swept them from the floor.

“Oh, I don’t know about that.” Camp was shouting at her now. “Only a saint could put up with you.”

Their bedroom door opened and banged once, twice, as he stormed into the hallway, a permanent dent in the plaster where the door handle met the wall. Sometimes I wondered if my father realized that doors didn’t need to be banged open or slammed shut to work correctly.

“Camp!” my mother shouted at him from the top of the stairs. “Will this fucking war of yours never end?”

I had never heard my mother use the word “fuck” before. Wham! Camp slammed the front door with so much force that it shook the foundation of the house.

I guess she got her answer.

Sinking back down in my bed, flopping onto my stomach, I buried my face in my pillow. Soon I had forgotten whose side I was on.

A
FTER THAT MONUMENTAL BATTLE,
an equally epic silence crept into the house and lingered for weeks, my parents barely speaking to each other. The absence of conversation was so unusual and disarming, it felt as if it must be a sign of the impending apocalypse.

Riding was my only distraction and I spent the first part of every day training for the fall shows. I wanted to be an eventer and I needed the practice. Sitting at the vanity in my bedroom, I pulled on my riding pants and my boots, ran my fingers through my hair—a brush only made matters worse—and headed downstairs intending to go for an early ride cross-country.

Greer glanced up from where she sat at the table as I walked into the kitchen. She was on the telephone, its lax cord wound loosely round the two fingers that she held up to shush me. Blooming like an extravagant lavender border, she wore a deep blue cotton dress with black polka dots, the perfumed effects of its wide shoulder straps, sweetheart neckline and fitted bodice creating the impression that she was her own garden party.

Lou smiled over at me from where she stood at the stove and whispered her willingness to make me breakfast. Did I want French toast? I nodded, slightly distracted as Vera jumped up and tried to yank my riding gloves from my hands. Lou and I, resigned to our rampant status as itch grass alongside the exotic cultivar of Greer, shared a brief commiserating glance as I tossed a tennis ball into the hallway, Vera in clumsy pursuit. Then I pulled up a chair and sat down at the table as Lou poured me a glass of orange juice.

“So the police definitely think he ran away. What does Michael think?” My mother wasn’t usually so attentive when speaking to Gin. That was before Charlie Devlin disappeared. She and Gin talked about it compulsively, to the point that it was hard not to conclude that the worst thing to happen to Michael Devlin was also the best thing to happen to them. Several moments passed without any interruption from her, her cigarette burning away neglected, the embers collecting in the bottom of the ashtray.

“I don’t know this boy, of course,” she interrupted finally, “but it’s been three weeks, wouldn’t you think he would have relented and called home by now? The fact that none of his friends know where he is—or claim not to know anyway—seems significant to me. Maybe there’s been an accident of some sort, or God forbid, a kidnapping. Oh, but then, wouldn’t you expect a ransom demand, given Michael’s wealth? Honestly, the more I think about it, he’s probably holed up in some dive in Haight Ashbury reeking of incense and fey girls. Anyway, very sad. Poor Michael. I feel terrible for him. I would be frantic if it were Riddle.”

Surprised to hear her say such a thing, I looked at her in some disbelief and felt mildly relieved, my comfort levels restored, when she rolled her eyes in annoyance at my silent profession of skepticism. I took a bite of my toast, Lou and I sneaking amused glances—now there was the mother I knew! My faith restored, I took a moment to survey my immediate area. Spread across the table were the daily newspapers, all of them featuring stories about the missing boy. When a rich and famous man’s son vanishes it doesn’t go unnoticed.

I glanced down at the headline: “Where is Charlie Devlin? Private Schoolboy’s Disappearance Remains a Mystery.” The more I consumed about the case, the less real it seemed, as if the flesh and blood of Charlie Devlin had been supplanted by a boy in a fixed number of infinitely repeating poses, a boy constructed of ink and newsprint and projected emotions, his shallow biography bolstered by predictable personal anecdotes and photos in black and white.

Charlie loved sports, played baseball, played tennis, was a promising rider, a gifted writer and a talented musician, an accomplished pianist. Charlie was funny. Charlie was smart. Charlie was popular. A good student, he was high-spirited and got into a few scrapes at school, was always playing pranks, was a regular in the headmaster’s office.

Reading about my mother and father in the press over the years had produced the same anesthetizing effects. Stripped of their humanity, they were editorial caricatures, lifeless as Gin’s taxidermy collectibles, with no connection to me, to themselves or to the living world.

A
FEW HOURS LATER, HOT,
scraped, scratched and dirty, back from my ride, I found Greer in the library. She glanced round, greeting me offhandedly.

“What’s that doing on the desk?” I asked her, pointing to a favorite watercolor of hers. My mother had an avid interest in art and collected what she could. She had inherited several fine pieces from her mother.

“I’m selling it.” She stood over the painting, running her fingers along the carved detailing of the rosewood frame. “Someone has to pay for your father’s excesses,” she said, a trace of bitterness evident.

“Are we that broke?” The familiar jangle of our chronic money worries clanked inside me like loose change.

“Well, of course we are,” she snapped. “I’m not the Shah of Iran. I don’t have a bottomless trust, although Camp seems to think I do.”

“Camp puts other things ahead of money. He has principles and he’s angry about what happened in Vietnam.”

Bristling on cue, in keeping with my self-righteous view of myself as an incipient idealist and aspiring pundit, I was reluctant to acknowledge that when it came to politics it was simply easier and more comfortable to take up arms alongside Camp. Inwardly, I flushed to hear myself talking about upholding principle, making the moral choice.

“Don’t we all have principles?” she barked back. “Look, Riddle, time for a little perspective. No one cares if your father and his smug little committee go to Vietnam cherry-picking evidence to support their biases and prejudices. What a crock! I can write the report now and spare them the phony exercise of a trip. Anyway, what’s it got to do with him? He’s not the center of the universe, you know. Why must he always put himself there?” She looked down at her painting. “And so the Trang Bang atrocity becomes the Camperdown Comedy.”

“How can you compare the loss of your painting to what happened in that village?” I was shocked and dismayed. My mother could be astoundingly solipsistic.

“You’re right,” she conceded, much to my surprise. I looked at her with suspicion; concession wasn’t exactly her long suit. “There is absolutely no comparison in value between a magnificent piece of art and a human being. People are a dime a dozen. That’s what makes the forced sale of this painting so tragic.”

At one time I might have argued with her or even been entertained by the sheer cultivated awfulness of her remarks, but now I began to see my mother’s glamorous misanthropy as proof of my own dubious origins.

My father came in from outside and walked up behind me. He avoided looking at my mother, who flapped from the room on the noisy wings of a loud sigh.

“I’m heading into Harwich. I’ve got a few things to take care of before I leave the country. You want to join me?”

“Sure,” I said.

I
SAT IN THE PASSENGER
seat of our old sedan—according to Camp, owning new cars was something to which bankers aspired—filled with stale smoke from my mother’s cigarettes. Rolling down the window, I searched in vain for an unobstructed breath, but there was no respite anywhere. The air outside was still on fire, seared by what had happened weeks earlier, the sky gray as granite, smoke damage permeating everywhere I lived, inside and outside, deep within, seeping like heavy fog into my lungs, acrid smell rolling across the dunes and dispersing over the Atlantic.

“Will that smell ever go away?” I asked my father as he slid in behind the steering wheel.

“It stinks all right,” Camp said as we drove down the lane to the road.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” It was obvious that Camp wasn’t referring to the lingering odor of smoke in the air.

“There is something very fishy about what happened. Methinks it’s a classic case of friction. You know . . . the mortgage rubbing up against the insurance policy.”

I was stunned. “You mean, you think . . . ?”

“I think Gin burned down the barn to collect the insurance money. The convenient placement of the Dunhill package was a dead giveaway, as far as I’m concerned, though Gin’s notable lack of character is all the evidence I really need.”

“But Gin loves those horses,” I said. “He would never . . .”

“Never what? Put his interests ahead of theirs? If it comes right down to it, most people would choose money over just about anything or anyone. Gin is dependent on handouts from his mother to survive and she is notoriously punishing. Sure he loves his horses. He loves your mother, too. Gin loves his horses the way he loves your mother. Capisce?”