Answered Prayers (11 page)

“I’m not a poet. I’m a masseur.”

She winced. “
Bruises
. A leaf drops and I’m blue.”

Aces said: “You told me you were a writer.”

“Well, I am. Was. Sort of. But it seems I’m a better masseur than a writer.”

Miss Hutton consulted Aces; it was as if they were whispering with their eyes.

She said: “Perhaps he could help Kate.”

He said, addressing me: “Are you free to travel?”

“Possibly. I don’t seem to do much else.”

“When could you meet me in Paris?” he asked, brisk now, a businessman.

“Tomorrow.”

“No. Next week. Thursday. Ritz bar. Rue Cambon side. One-fifteen.”

The heiress sighed into the banquette’s goose-stuffed brocades. “Poor boy,” she said, and tapped curving, slavishly lacquered apricot nails against a champagne glass, a signal for the Senegalese servant to lift her, lift her away up blue-tiled stairs to firelit chambers where Morpheus, always a mischief-maker to the frantic, the insulted, but especially to the rich and powerful, joyfully awaited a game of hide-and-seek.

I SOLD A SAPPHIRE RING
, also a gift from Denny Fouts, who in turn had received it as a birthday present from his Grecian prince, to Dean, the mulatto proprietor of Dean’s Bar, the principal rival of Le Parade for the colony’s
haute monde
trade. It was a giveaway, but it flew me to Paris, and Mutt, too—Mutt stuffed into an Air France travel bag.

On Thursday, at one-fifteen precisely, I walked into the Ritz bar still toting Mutt in her canvas satchel, for she had refused to remain behind in the cheap hotel room we had moved into on the rue du Bac. Aces Nelson, slick-haired and gleamingly good-humored, was waiting for us at a corner table.

He patted the dog and said: “Well. I’m surprised. I didn’t really think you’d show up.”

All I said was: “This had better be good.”

Georges, the head bartender at the Ritz, is a daiquiri specialist. I ordered a double daiquiri, so did Aces, and while they were being concocted, Aces asked: “What do you know about Kate McCloud?”

I shrugged. “Just what I read in the junk papers. Very handy with a rifle. Isn’t she the one who shot a white leopard?”

“No,” he said thoughtfully. “She was on safari in India, and she shot a man for killing a white leopard—not fatally, fortunately.”

The drinks appeared, and we drank them without another word between us, except Mutt’s intermittent yaps. A good daiquiri is smoothly tart and slightly sweet; a bad one is a vial of acid. Georges knew the difference. So we ordered another, and Aces said: “Kate has an apartment here in the hotel, and after we’ve talked I want you to meet her. She’s expecting us. But first I want to tell you about her. Would you like a sandwich?”

We ordered plain chicken sandwiches, the only variety available in the Ritz bar, Cambon side. Aces said: “I had a roommate at Choate—Harry McCloud. His mother was an Otis from Baltimore, and his father owned a lot of Virginia—specifically, he owned a big spread in Middleburg, where he bred hunting horses. Harry was very intense, a very competitive and jealous guy. But anybody as rich as he was, and as good-looking, athletic—you don’t hear many complaints. Everybody took him for a regular guy, except for this one strange thing—whenever the guys started bullshitting about sex, girls they’d laid, wanted to lay, all that stuff, well, Harry kept his mouth shut. The whole two years we roomed together he never had a date, never mentioned a girl. Some of the guys said maybe Harry’s queer. But I just knew that wasn’t the case. It was a real mystery. Finally, the week before graduation, we got loaded on a bunch of beer—ah, sweet seventeen—and I asked if all his family were coming
for the graduation, and he said: ‘My brother is. And Mom and Dad.’ Then I said: ‘What about your girl friend? But I forgot. You don’t have a girl friend.’ He looked at me for the longest while, as if he were trying to decide whether to hit me or ignore me. At last he smiled; it was the fiercest smile I ever saw on a human face. I can’t explain, but it stunned me; it made me want to cry. ‘Yes. I have a girl friend. Nobody knows it. Not her folks, not mine. But we’ve been engaged for three years. The day I’m twenty-one I’m going to marry her. I’ll be eighteen in July, and I’d marry her then. But I can’t. She’s only twelve years old.’

“Most secrets should never be told, but especially those that are more menacing to the listener than to the teller; I felt Harry would turn against me for having coaxed, or shall I say permitted, his confession. But once started, there was no surcease. He was incoherent, the incoherency of the obsessed: the girl’s father, a Mr. Mooney, was an Irish immigrant, a real bog rat from County Kildare, the hand groom at the McClouds’ Middleburg farm. The girl, that’s Kate, was one of five children, all girls, and all eyesores. Except for the youngest, Kate. ‘The first time I saw her—well,
noticed
her—she was six, seven. All the Mooney kids had red hair. But
her
hair. Even all scissored up. Like a tomboy. She was a great rider. She could urge a horse into jumps that made your heart thump. And she had green eyes. Not
just
green. I can’t explain it.’

“The senior McClouds had two sons, Harry and a younger boy, Wynn. But they had always wanted a daughter, and gradually, without any resistance from the girl’s family, they had absorbed Kate into the main household. Mrs. McCloud was an educated woman, a linguist, musician, a collector. She tutored Kate in French and German and taught her piano. More importantly, she took all the ain’ts and Irish out of Kate’s vocabulary. Mrs. McCloud dressed her, and on European holidays Kate
traveled with the family. ‘I’ve never loved anyone else.’ That’s what Harry said. ‘Three years ago I asked her to marry me, and she promised she would never marry anyone else. I gave her a diamond ring. I stole it from my grandmother’s jewel case. My grandmother decided she had lost it. She even claimed the insurance. Kate keeps the ring hidden in a trunk.’ ”

When the sandwiches arrived, Aces pushed his aside in favor of a cigarette. I ate half of mine and fed the rest to Mutt.

“And sure enough, four years later, Harry McCloud married this extraordinary girl, scarcely sixteen. I went to the wedding—it was at the Episcopal church in Middleburg—and the first time I saw the bride was when she came down the aisle on the arm of her little bog-rat dad. The truth is
she was some kind of freak
. The grace, the bearing, the
authority:
whatever her age, she was simply a superb actress. Are you a Raymond Chandler fan, Jones? Oh, good. Good. I think he’s a great artist. The point is, Kate Mooney reminded me of one of those mysterious enigmatic rich-girl Raymond Chandler heroines. Oh, but with a lot more class. Anyway, Chandler wrote about one of his heroines: ‘There are blondes, and then there are blondes.’ So true; but it’s even truer about redheads. There is always something wrong with redheads. The hair is kinky, or it’s the wrong color, too dark and tough, or too pale and sickly. And the skin—it rejects the elements: wind, sun, everything discolors it. A really beautiful redhead is rarer than a flawless forty-carat pigeon-blood ruby—or a flawed one, for that matter. But none of this was true of Kate. Her hair was like a winter sunset, lighted with the last of the pale afterglow. And the only redhead I’ve ever seen with a complexion to compare with hers was Pamela Churchill’s. But then, Pam is English, she grew up saturated with dewy English mists, something every dermatologist ought to bottle. And Harry McCloud was quite right about her eyes. Mostly it’s a
myth. Usually they are grey, grey-blue with green inner flickerings. Once, in Brazil, I met on the beach a light-skinned colored boy with eyes as slightly slanted and green as Kate’s. Like Mrs. Grant’s emeralds.

“She was perfect. Harry worshiped her; so did his parents. But they had overlooked one small factor—she was shrewd, she could outthink any of them, and she was planning far beyond the McClouds. I recognized that at once. I belong to the same breed, though I can’t pretend to have one-tenth Kate’s intelligence.”

Aces fished in his jacket pocket for a kitchen match; snapping it against his thumbnail, he ignited another cigarette.

“No,” Aces said, responding to an unasked question. “They never had any children. Years passed, and I had cards from them every Christmas, usually a picture of Kate smartly saddled for some hunt—Harry holding the reins, bugle in hand. Bubber Hayden, a guy we’d known at Choate, turned up at one of those chatty little Joe Alsop Georgetown dinners; I knew he lived in Middleburg, so I asked him about the McClouds. Bubber said: ‘She divorced him—she’s gone abroad to live, I believe some three months ago. It’s a terrible story, and I don’t know a quarter of it. I do know the McClouds have Harry tucked away in one of those comfy little Connecticut retreats with guarded gates and strong bars at the windows.’

“I must have had that conversation in early August. I called Harry’s mother—she was at the yearling sales in Saratoga—and I asked about Harry; I said I wanted to visit him, and she said no, that wasn’t possible, and she began to cry and said she was sorry and hung up.

“Now, it happens that I was going to St. Moritz for Christmas; on the way I stopped off in Paris and called up Tutti Rouxjean, who had worked for years as
vendeuse
for Balenciaga. I invited her to lunch, and she said yes, but we would have to go
to Maxim’s. I said couldn’t we meet at some quiet bistro, and she said no, we had to go to Maxim’s. ‘It’s important. You’ll see why.’

“Tutti had reserved a table in the front room, and after we’d had a glass of white wine she indicated a nearby unoccupied table rather ostentatiously set for one. ‘Wait,’ said Tutti. ‘In a moment the most beautiful young woman will be sitting at that table, quite alone. Cristobal has been dressing her for the last six months. He thinks there has never been anything like her since Gloria Rubio.’ (Note: Mme. Rubio, a supremely elegant Mexican who has been known in various stages of her marital assignments as the wife of the German Count von Fürstenberg, the Egyptian Prince Fakri, and the English millionaire Loel Guinness.) ‘
Le tout Paris
talks about her and yet no one knows much about her. Except that she’s American. And that she lunches here every day. Always alone. She seems to have no friends. Ah, see. There she is.’

“Unlike any other woman in the room, she wore a hat. It was a glamorous soft-brimmed black hat, large, shaped like a man’s Borsalino. A grey chiffon scarf was loosely knotted at her throat. The hat, the scarf, that was the drama; the rest was the plainest, but best-fitted, of Balenciaga’s box-jacketed black bombazine suits.

“Tutti said: ‘She’s from the South somewhere. Her name is Mrs. McCloud.’

“ ‘Mrs. Harry Clinton McCloud?’

“Tutti said: ‘You
know
her?’

“And I said: ‘I ought to. I was an usher at her wedding. Fantastic. Why, my God, she can’t be more than twenty-two.’

“I asked a waiter for paper and wrote her a note: ‘Dear Kate, I don’t know if you remember me, but I was a roommate of Harry’s at school and an usher at your wedding. I am in Paris for a few days and would like so much to see you, if you care to. I am at the Hotel Lotti. Aces Nelson.’

“I watched her read the note, glance at me, smile, then write a reply: ‘I do remember. If, on your way out, we might talk a minute alone, please have a Cognac with me. Most sincerely, Kate McCloud.’

“Tutti was too fascinated to be offended by her exclusion from the invitation: ‘I won’t press you now, but promise me, Aces, you’ll tell me about her. She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. I thought she was at least thirty. Because of her “eye”—the real knowledge, taste. She’s just one of those ageless creatures, I suppose.’

“And so, after Tutti had departed, I joined Kate at her solitary table, seated myself beside her on the red banquette, and to my surprise she kissed me on the cheek. I blushed with shock and pleasure, and Kate laughed—oh, what a laugh she has; it always makes me think of a brandy glass shining in the firelight—she laughed and said: ‘Why not? It’s been a long time since I’ve kissed a man. Or spoken to anyone who wasn’t a waiter or chambermaid or a shopkeeper. I do a great deal of shopping. I’ve bought enough stuff to furnish Versailles.’ I asked how long she had been in Paris and where she was living and what her life was like in general. And she said she was at the Ritz, she’d been in Paris almost a year: ‘And as for my day-to-day affairs—I shop, I go for fittings, I go to all the museums and galleries, I ride to the Bois, I read, I sleep a helluva lot, and I have lunch here every day at this same table: not very imaginative of me, but it is a pleasant walk from the hotel, and there are not too many agreeable restaurants where a young woman can lunch alone without seeming somewhat suspicious. Even the owner here, Monsieur Vaudable—I think at first he imagined I must be some kind of courtesan.’ And I said: ‘But it must be such a lonely life. Don’t you want to see people? Do something different?’

“She said: ‘Yes. I’d like to have a different kind of liqueur with my coffee. Something I’ve never heard of. Any suggestions?’

“So I described Verveine; I thought of it because it is the identical green of her eyes. It’s made out of a million-odd mountain herbs; I’ve never found it anywhere outside France and damn few places here. Delicious; but with a kick like bad moonshine. So we had a couple of Verveines, and Kate said: ‘Yes, indeed. That certainly is different. And yes, to answer you seriously, I am beginning to be … well, not
bored
, but
tempted:
afraid, but tempted. When you’ve been in pain for a long time, when you wake up every morning with a rising sense of hysteria, then boredom is what you want, marathon sleeps, a silence in yourself. Everybody wanted me to go to a hospital; and I would have done anything to please Harry’s mother, but I knew I could never live again, be
tempted
, until I’d tried to do it unaided by anyone but myself.’

“Suddenly I said: ‘Are you a good skier?’ And she said: ‘I might have been. But Harry was always dragging me to this horrible place in Canada. Gray Rocks. Thirty below zero. He loved it because everybody was so ugly. Aces, this drink is a marvelous discovery. I feel a decided thawing in my veins.’