The Lord Won't Mind (The Peter & Charlie Trilogy) (10 page)

“I know why you’ve come,” he said. “I had a call from Will Pringle after you’d called. I guess we better talk in private. Let’s go up to the office.”

They mounted stairs and skirted the deserted dining room and entered the rooms where the club’s business was conducted. They, too, were deserted except for a younger man, who rose from behind a desk as they entered. “Ah, Dick. You know Dick Baird, Armina. This is Mrs. Collinge. Charlie Mills is her grandson.”

“Grandson? I thought it was nephew.”

C. B. leaned gracefully on her parasol. “There was a time when people found it difficult to believe that I was a grandmother. They mistook my daughter for my sister.” She lifted her head jauntily. “I wasn’t always scrupulous in correcting them. The error has persisted.”

“Not surprising,” Munger said. “I still don’t find you convincing as a grandmother.”

“Flattery always came easily to your tongue, Bruce.”

“Well, I’ll leave you,” Baird said. “I’m taking those announcements about the cabaret up to town tomorrow and having them run through my office.”

“Don’t go, Mr. Baird,” C. B. commanded. “You’re a member of the Board, I believe. I’m glad to have a witness. I wish to make this an official visit.” She swept over to one of the chairs grouped around the desk and seated herself. The two men followed her and sat. C. B. flicked one of her gloves with distaste. “I’ve just received an unspeakably insolent telephone call from a man called Pringle. I know your requirements for membership these days aren’t as strict as they might be so long as people pay their dues promptly, but it appears that in this case you’ve been too lax.”

“Oh, well, Pringle’s all right. A bit of a rough diamond, perhaps.”

“I don’t choose to associate with rough diamonds, Bruce. He’s made unmentionable charges against my grandson and since he’s made an issue of his membership in the club, I insist that you obtain a written apology from him by tomorrow morning or I’ll demand a public airing of the whole disgusting affair.”

“Well now, Armina, I dare say there’s been a misunderstanding between the young people. Youngsters have a lot more freedom than they did in our day. Sometimes it leads to difficulties.”

C. B. squared her shoulders and sat very straight in her chair. She tapped the floor with her parasol. “I’ve brought Charlie up to be a gentleman through and through. It’s inconceivable that he should be guilty of misconduct under any circumstances.”

“I’m sure you’re right. He’s a fine lad. I wish I’d had his looks when I was his age. I’ll bet he has lots of the girls swooning over him.”

“That may well be, but I can assure you that Charlie has no interest in this wretched Pringle child, nor in any other girl at the moment.”

“Now Armina, I don’t think we can be too sure of that. We menfolk are always capable of being susceptible to a pretty girl.”

“I find your manner frivolous, Bruce, in view of the fashion in which this Pringle person spoke to me. Am I to count on you to produce an apology, or do you wish me to demand a full hearing before the Board? I’m sure Charlie can produce witnesses to disprove whatever filth this person may invent.”

“Now, that surely won’t be necessary. I think I can put it to Pringle that he’d be well advised to climb down.”

“I hope so. My first impulse was to resign from a club where such a man could be a member. If I did, I’m sure I wouldn’t be alone. The world is changing, but there still remain those with certain standards who won’t be bullied by the Pringles among us. By tomorrow morning, then?”

“Yes, that seems fair enough.”

“Can I count on you, Mr. Baird, to second Bruce’s efforts?”

“Yes, indeed. I don’t know what the story is, but I know Pringle is apt to be a bit of a firebrand. We don’t want the club’s atmosphere poisoned by gossip.”

“Very well. You don’t have to see me out, Bruce. Stay and set the wheels in motion.” She rose, and they sprang up. She bowed to them both with a proud but charming tilt of her head and tripped out on neat and dainty feet.

“My word,” Baird said when she was gone. The two men looked at each other and laughed. “She seems to have a rather peculiar idea of the way young gentlemen behave with girls.”

“She’s an extraordinary woman. I think Will bit off more than he could chew when he tackled her.”

“Nice clean-cut looking kid, the Mills boy. What’s it all about?”

“Randy young devil. Have you noticed him? Hung like a horse, to put it plainly. From what Pringle said, my guess is that the girl had hot pants for him and then balked when he produced it for her. He should’ve let her have it anyway. Serve her right.”

“What’s the next move?”

“Let’s tackle him together. He doesn’t want to start a lot of gossip about his own daughter.”

“I know his partner well. As a matter of fact, the bank is holding some of their paper.”

“I don’t think he’ll give us any trouble. Not when he understands just who he’s dealing with. Armina Collinge is not one to accept halfway measures. She’d blow the whole club apart if it suited her purposes.”

“I’ve always been fascinated by her, but I’ve never seen her under quite such full sail, if you know what I mean. My wife’s from the South, you know. She says there was some mystery about her husband’s death. There’s supposed to be a bit of the tarbrush there, too.”

“That’s pretty generally true of those old Southern families, isn’t it? I might as well call Pringle.”

CHARLIE and Peter, dressed again after their swim, found C. B. on the veranda reading the Sunday papers. She lowered her lorgnette as they joined her and gazed up at them.

“My bronze gods. I’ve been waiting for you. Let’s have a drink. I need one. I’ve had a rather harrowing morning.”

“Well, come on, tell us about it,” Charlie demanded, with the same almost imperceptible apprehension. “Where’ve you been?”

She laid papers aside and rose and went to her bar. “I didn’t want to go into it until I’d straightened it out. It doesn’t matter now. As a mater of fact, the phone call I had this morning was from a deplorable man called Pringle.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Charlie flushed. He felt Peter’s eyes on him. After the first contraction of his heart, he recovered himself. She had said she’d straightened it out. “What in the world did he want?” he asked almost casually.

“He was quite incoherent—common men always are when they let themselves go—but the gist of it was that you’d upset his daughter in some way.” She turned and held out glasses to them.

“But what did he say? Upset her how?” He had to know what Pringle had told her; he couldn’t allow her to think that he’d actually done any of those things. He took the glasses and carried one to Peter without meeting his eye.

“Oh, my dearest, you don’t suppose I’d allow such a man to go into particulars.” Her laughter tinkled disdainfully. “I know, just as Peter does, that you’re incapable of doing anything low or questionable in any way.”

“It’s ridiculous,” Peter joined in. “He was being very nice to her. We were together the entire evening.”

“I knew you would have been, my darling.” She carried a drink back to her chair. “I quite understand it. Charlie was nice to the poor little thing, and she went quite out of her mind with fantasies about him. I suppose one mustn’t be too hard on her. We’ve both seen how irresistibly charming Charlie can be. It’s unthinkable that he could ever be guilty of grossness or cruelty.”

“I did take her home,” Charlie pointed out. He was sufficiently experienced in deception to know that it’s wise to keep outright lies to a minimum. “You weren’t with me then.”

“Oh, that,” Peter agreed hastily. “That was nothing. Ten minutes at the most. Just time to take her to her house and come back.” Charlie noted the falsehood; Peter was apparently determined to provide him with an alibi.

“That would be useful to know if anything were to come of this,” C. B. approved, “but it’s all taken care of already. I simply went to Bruce Munger and told him that if I didn’t have an apology from the person by tomorrow morning, I would insist on a full hearing before the club Board. I knew I could count on Peter as a witness.”

“What did Mr. Munger say?” Charlie asked.

“He agreed that an apology was quite necessary and correct. I put it into his hands. I think I can let the matter rest there. But I do think you’d better avoid the poor girl in the future.”

“I should hope so. The whole thing is absolutely nuts.” He looked at her with gratitude, knowing that he needn’t have worried. He could always count on her, no matter what difficulties might arise. Still, he’d feel better when she actually had the apology in her hands.

As far as C. B. was concerned, the subject was apparently disposed of and she didn’t refer to it again, but Charlie could see that Peter was still brooding about it. When he and Peter returned to their room after lunch, they didn’t pull their clothes off as they might normally have done but wandered about restlessly, ill at ease and constrained.

“All right, champ,” Peter said finally. The use of the public name in private marked a distance between them. “You might as well tell me. Did you—well, did you fuck her?”

“Oh, for God’s sake. I might have known it. Now you’re going to grill me. No, I didn’t.”

“Then what’s it all about?”

“We were just fooling around the way kids do and she started screaming and I told her to shut up and took her home.”

“I see. Then you would’ve fucked her if she’d let you?”

“Sure. Why not? It happens between guys and girls.”

“I suppose it does.” He knew that there must be more to the story than Charlie was telling, but he didn’t particularly care about details; he believed Charlie’s account of the basic facts. The experience of love was so new to him that he had no fixed convictions about fidelity and related questions. He knew he shouldn’t even think about competing with girls, and yet he was determined to do so; he fiercely wanted Charlie for himself. He had no firmer grasp on the future than Charlie had. He knew simply that as long as life continued as he knew it, he would have to be with Charlie. His own fidelity was an imperative, regardless of what Charlie did, even though in the last few weeks he had become aware of the attractions of other young men.

“Thanks for lying for me,” Charlie said grudgingly, after a silence.

“Oh, that.” Peter shrugged. “I loved doing it. If you ever need to be rescued from a sinking ship or anything, just let me know. That’s the sort of thing I dream about.”

“Crazy. Then what’s the matter, baby?” He came and perched on the arm of the chair where Peter was sprawled and ran a hand over his hair and gave his shoulder an impatient little shake. Now that it was sorting itself out, he wasn’t sorry to have been the subject of a small scandal with a girl; it was the best advertisement of his masculinity. If C. B. had gone to Mr. Munger, there would be gossip—about him and the girl, not about some other thing. He tugged Peter’s hair. “The whole thing with Betty was just stupid.”

Charlie’s tentative satisfaction came through as smugness; Peter felt helpless against it. “I think it was. I guess it’s obvious I wish it hadn’t happened, not that that matters to anyone.”

Charlie put his hands on his shoulders and squeezed them. “That shows how much you know about it. I wish it hadn’t, too.”

Peter looked up quickly. “Do you?” He looked at length, amazed at having won this much of an apology, and then smiled slowly and lifted his hands to Charlie’s. “Then that makes it all right.”

The events of the night before and this aftermath were solidifying and defining their relationship. To Peter, Betty was a warning. If his idol was flawed, it was all the more important for him to be at his side, to defend him from danger; he sensed instinctively that Charlie’s refusal to accept the nature of their relationship could lead to serious trouble. He hadn’t attempted to analyze his own wholehearted acceptance, but if he had, he would have encountered special circumstances: the taboo on sex in any form at home, so that guilt would have been apportioned equally to all acts he might have committed, an intolerable burden, which in effect mitigated guilt; and his deep angry antagonism to his father, the General. He knew his father would be appalled by the road he had chosen, and this confirmed him in it. He already looked forward to his finding out, but not until he was twenty-one, so there could be no legal complications. He could imagine himself being slapped into some sort of reformatory school.

He gripped Charlie’s hands for safety and was aware that needs and demands of his own were emerging. All their talk about going to New York together had remained singularly amorphous because of Charlie’s edict against discussing it with C. B. He was suddenly determined to take practical steps.

“I’m going to write Columbia this afternoon. Right now.” He pulled himself up in the chair and propped his elbow on Charlie’s thighs. “We’ve got to find out about night courses and fees and all that stuff. Even if I don’t actually do anything about it, we’ve got to know what we’re talking about when we talk to C. B.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking more about that, too, of course. I don’t see why we necessarily have to tell her. You have to go home first, anyway. I don’t see why you can’t just come back to New York and move in, and we’ll see how things work out.”

“But you say it has to be all right with her because of the allowance and everything.”