The Loved One (6 page)

Dennis searched long fruitlessly and was contemplating a
desperate sortie to the public library when he found a stained old copy of the
Apollo
preserved, Heaven knew why, in Sir Francis’s handkerchief drawer. The blue cover had faded to gray, the date was February 1920. It comprised chiefly poems by women, many of them, probably, grandmothers by now. Perhaps one of these warm lyrics explained the magazine’s preservation after so many years in so remote an outpost. There was, however, at the end a book review signed F.H. It dealt, Dennis noticed, with a poetess whose sonnets appeared on an earlier page. The name was now forgotten, but perhaps here, Dennis reflected, was something “near the heart of the man,” something which explained his long exile; something anyway which obviated a trip to the public library… “This slim volume redolent of a passionate and reflective talent above the ordinary…” Dennis cut out the review and sent it to Sir Ambrose. Then he turned to his task of composition.

*

The pickled oak, the chintz, the spongy carpet and the Georgian staircase all ended sharply on the second floor. Above that lay a quarter where no layman penetrated. It was approached by elevator, an open functional cage eight feet square. On this top floor everything was tile and porcelain, linoleum and chromium. Here there were the embalming-rooms with their rows of inclined china slabs, their taps and tubes and pressure pumps, their deep gutters and the heavy
smell of formaldehyde. Beyond lay the cosmetic rooms with their smell of shampoo and hot hair and acetone and lavender.

An orderly wheeled the stretcher into Aimée’s cubicle. It bore a figure under a sheet. Mr. Joyboy walked beside it.

“Good morning, Miss Thanatogenos.”

“Good morning, Mr. Joyboy.”

“Here is the strangulated Loved One for the Orchid Room.”

Mr. Joyboy was the perfection of high professional manners. Before he came there had been some decline of gentility in the ascent from show-room to workshop. There had been talk of “bodies” and “cadavers”; one jaunty young embalmer from Texas had even spoken of “the meat.” That young man had gone within a week of Mr. Joyboy’s appointment as Senior Mortician, an event which occurred a month after Aimée Thanatogenos’s arrival at Whispering Glades as junior cosmetician. She remembered the bad old days before his arrival and gratefully recognized the serene hush which seemed by nature to surround him.

Mr. Joyboy was not a handsome man by the standards of motion-picture studios. He was tall but unathletic. There was lack of shape in his head and body, a lack of color; he had scant eyebrows and invisible eyelashes; the eyes behind his pince-nez were pinkish-gray; his hair, though neat and scented, was sparse; his hands were fleshy; his best feature was perhaps his teeth and they though white and regular seemed rather too large for him; he was a trifle flat-footed and more than a
trifle paunchy. But these physical defects were nugatory when set against his moral earnestness and the compelling charm of his softly resonant voice. It was as though there were an amplifier concealed somewhere within him and his speech came from some distant and august studio; everything he said might have been for a peak-hour listening period.

Dr. Kenworthy always bought the best and Mr. Joyboy came to Whispering Glades with a great reputation. He had taken his baccalaureate in embalming in the Middle West and for some years before his appointment to Whispering Glades had been one of the Undertaking Faculty at an historic Eastern University. He had served as Chief Social Executive at two National Morticians’ Conventions. He had led a goodwill mission to the morticians of Latin America. His photograph, albeit with a somewhat ribald caption, had appeared in
Time
magazine.

Before he came there had been murmurs in the embalming-room that Mr. Joyboy was a mere theorist. These were dispelled on the first morning. He had only to be seen with a corpse to be respected. It was like the appearance of a stranger in the hunting-field who from the moment he is seen in the saddle, before hounds move off, proclaims himself unmistakably a horseman. Mr. Joyboy was unmarried and every girl in Whispering Glades gloated on him.

Aimée knew that her voice assumed a peculiar tone when she spoke to him. “Was he a very difficult case, Mr. Joyboy?”

“Well, a wee bit but I think everything has turned out satisfactorily.”

He drew the sheet back and revealed the body of Sir Francis lying naked save for a new pair of white linen drawers. It was white and slightly translucent, like weathered marble.

“Oh, Mr. Joyboy, he’s beautiful.”

“Yes, I fancy he has come up nicely”; he gave a little poulterer’s pinch to the thigh. “Supple,” he raised an arm and gently bent the wrist. “I think we have two or three hours before he need take the pose. The head will have to incline slightly to put the carotid suture in the shadow. The skull drained very nicely.”

“But, Mr. Joyboy, you’ve given him the Radiant Childhood Smile.”

“Yes, don’t you like it?”

“Oh,
I
like it, of course, but his Waiting One did not ask for it.”

“Miss Thanatogenos, for you the Loved Ones just naturally smile.”

“Oh, Mr. Joyboy.”

“It’s true, Miss Thanatogenos. It seems I am just powerless to prevent it. When I am working for you there’s something inside me says ‘He’s on his way to Miss Thanatogenos’ and my fingers just seem to take control. Haven’t you noticed it?”

“Well, Mr. Joyboy, I did remark it only last week. ‘All the Loved Ones that come from Mr. Joyboy lately,’ I said, ‘have the most beautiful smiles.’ ”

“All for you, Miss Thanatogenos.”

No music was relayed here. The busy floor echoed with the swirling and gurgling of taps in the embalming-rooms, the hum of electric dryers in the cosmetic rooms. Aimée worked like a nun, intently, serenely, methodically; first the shampoo, then the shave, then the manicure. She parted the white hair, lathered the rubbery cheeks and plied the razor; she clipped the nails and probed the cuticle. Then she drew up the wheeled table on which stood her paints and brushes and creams and concentrated breathlessly on the crucial phase of her art.

Within two hours the main task was complete. Head, neck and hands were now in full color; somewhat harsh in tone, somewhat gross in patina, it seemed, in the penetrating light of the cosmetic room, but the
œuvre
was designed for the amber glow of the Slumber Room and the stained light of the chancel. She completed the blue stipple work round the eyelids and stood back complacently. On soft feet Mr. Joyboy had come to her side and was looking down at her work.

“Lovely, Miss Thanatogenos,” he said. “I can always trust you to carry out my intention. Did you have difficulty with the right eyelid?”

“Just a little.”

“A tendency to open in the inside corner?”

“Yes, but I worked a little cream under the lid and then firmed it with No. 6.”

“Excellent. I never have to tell
you
anything. We work in unison. When I send a Loved One in to you, Miss Thanatogenos, I feel as though I were speaking to you through him. Do you ever feel that at all yourself?”

“I know I’m always special proud and careful when it is one of yours, Mr. Joyboy.”

“I believe you are, Miss Thanatogenos. Bless you.”

Mr. Joyboy sighed. A porter’s voice said: “Two more Loved Ones just coming up, Mr. Joyboy. Who are they for?” Mr. Joyboy sighed again and went about his business.

“Mr. Vogel; are you free for the next?”

“Yes, Mr. Joyboy.”

“One of them is an infant,” said the porter. “Will you be taking her yourself?”

“Yes, as always. Is it a mother and child?”

The porter looked at the labels on the wrists. “No, Mr. Joyboy, no relation.”

“Very well, Mr. Vogel, will you take the adult? Had they been mother and child I should have taken both, busy though I am. There is a something in individual technique—not everyone would notice it perhaps; but if I saw a pair that had been embalmed by different hands I should know at once and I should feel that the child did not properly belong to its mother; as though they had been estranged in death. Perhaps I seem whimsical?”

“You do love children, don’t you, Mr. Joyboy?”

“Yes, Miss Thanatogenos. I try not to discriminate, but I am only human. There is something in the innocent appeal of a child that brings out a little more than the best in me. It’s as if I was inspired, sometimes, from outside; something higher… but I mustn’t start on my pet subject now. To work—”

Presently the outfitters came and dressed Sir Francis Hinsley in his shroud, deftly fitting it. Then they lifted him—he was getting rigid—and placed him in the casket.

Aimée went to the curtain which separated the embalming-rooms from the cosmetic rooms and attracted the notice of an orderly.

“Will you tell Mr. Joyboy that my Loved One is ready for posing? I think he should come now. He is firming.”

Mr. Joyboy turned off a tap and came to Sir Francis Hinsley. He raised the arms and set the hands together, not in a form of prayer, but folded one on the other in resignation. He raised the head, adjusted the pillow and twisted the neck so that a three-quarter face was exposed to view. He stood back, studied his work and then leaned forward again to give the chin a little tilt.

“Perfect,” he said. “There are a few places where he’s got a little rubbed putting him in the casket. Just go over them once with the brush quite lightly.”

“Yes, Mr. Joyboy.”

Mr. Joyboy lingered a moment, then turned away.

“Back to baby,” he said.

T
he funeral was fixed for Thursday; Wednesday afternoon was the time for leave-taking in the Slumber Room. That morning Dennis called at Whispering Glades to see that everything was in order.

He was shown straight to the Orchid Room. Flowers had arrived in great quantities, mostly from the shop below, mostly in their “natural beauty.” (After consultation the Cricket Club’s fine trophy in the shape of crossed bats and wickets had been admitted. Dr. Kenworthy had himself given judgment; the trophy was essentially a reminder of life, not of death; that was the crux.) The ante-room was so full of flowers that there seemed no other furniture or decoration; double doors led to the Slumber Room proper.

Dennis hesitated with his fingers on the handle and was aware of communication with another hand beyond the panels. Thus in a hundred novels had lovers stood. The door
opened and Aimée Thanatogenos stood quite close to him; behind her more, many more flowers and all about her a rich hot-house scent and the low voices of a choir discoursing sacred music from the cornice. At the moment of their meeting a treble voice broke out with poignant sweetness: “O for the Wings of a Dove.”

No breath stirred the enchanted stillness of the two rooms. The leaded casements were screwed tight. The air came, like the boy’s voice, from far away, sterilized and transmuted. The temperature was slightly cooler than is usual in American dwellings. The rooms seemed isolated and unnaturally quiet, like a railway coach that has stopped in the night far from any station.

“Come in, Mr. Barlow.”

Aimée stood aside and now Dennis saw that the center of the room was filled with a great cumulus of flowers. Dennis was too young ever to have seen an Edwardian conservatory in full fig but he knew the literature of the period and in his imagination had seen such a picture; it was all there, even the gilt chairs disposed in pairs as though for some starched and jeweled courtship.

There was no catafalque. The coffin stood a few inches from the carpet on a base that was hidden in floral enrichments. Half the lid was open. Sir Francis was visible from the waist up. Dennis thought of the wax-work of Marat in his bath.

The shroud had been made to fit admirably. There was a
fresh gardenia in the buttonhole and another between the fingers. The hair was snow-white and parted in a straight line from brow to crown revealing the scalp below, colorless and smooth as though the skin had rolled away and the enduring skull already lay exposed. The gold rim of the monocle framed a delicately tinted eyelid.

The complete stillness was more startling than any violent action. The body looked altogether smaller than life-size now that it was, as it were, stripped of the thick pelt of mobility and intelligence. And the face which inclined its blind eyes towards him—the face was entirely horrible; as ageless as a tortoise and as inhuman; a painted and smirking obscene travesty by comparison with which the devil-mask Dennis had found in the noose was a festive adornment, a thing an uncle might don at a Christmas party.

Aimée stood beside her handiwork—the painter at the private view—and heard Dennis draw his breath in sudden emotion.

“Is it what you hoped?” she asked.

“More”—and then—“Is he quite hard?”

“Firm.”

“May I touch him?”

“Please not. It leaves a mark.”

“Very well.”

Then in accordance with the etiquette of the place, she left him to his reflections.

There was brisk coming-and-going in the Orchid Slumber Room later that day; a girl from the Whispering Glades secretariat sat in the ante-room recording the names of the visitors. These were not the most illustrious. The stars, the producers, the heads of departments would come next day for the interment. That afternoon they were represented by underlings. It was like the party held on the eve of a wedding to view the presents, attended only by the intimate, the idle and the unimportant. The Yes-men were there in force. Man proposed. God disposed. These bland, plump gentlemen signaled their final abiding assent to the arrangement, nodding into the blind mask of death.

Sir Ambrose made a cursory visit.

“Everything set for tomorrow, Barlow? Don’t forget your ode. I should like it at least an hour before the time so that I can run over it in front of the mirror. How is it going?”

“I think it will be all right.”

“I shall recite it at the graveside. In the church there will be merely the reading from the Works and a song by Juanita—‘The Wearing of the Green.’ It’s the only Irish song she’s learned yet. Curious how Flamenco she makes it sound. Have you arranged the seating in the church?”