Appointment in Samarra (9 page)

No. I just like her, he said. I ve been learning how to take it.

How?

Mr. Robert Herrmann is in his best form, ribbing me about last night

Oh, Lord, where? In the locker room? Were there a lot of people there?

Yes. Whit and Froggy and the usual crowd. He told me I ought to sock out five bucks to cover Harry s subscription to the dance. And then he started kidding me about the war being over or something. How I waited till 1930 before I did my fighting, and a lot of stuff about calling out the state police.

Mm. I suppose we can expect an evening of that.

Why? Has anyone said anything to you?

No, not exactly. Kitty Holman came in the johnny while I

God, you women, going to the can together! Why do you always

Do you want to hear what she had to say? Or are you going to go into all that again?

I m sorry.

Well, Kitty, you know how she is. Comes right out with it. She said she heard Harry had a black eye, and I said yes, I knew he had. And she said Whit is worried. Did he say anything to you?

No. He didn t get much chance, with Bobby holding forth. I didn t wait to talk to Whit.

Well, apparently Whit knows Harry has money in the garage.

Sure he knows. It s no secret. As a matter of fact I think I told Whit myself. Yes, I did. I had to tell him, because when Whit heard about it last summer he wanted to know why I hadn t come to him, and I told him everybody came to him. Didn t I tell you that?

No, you didn t. But anyhow, Kitty said Whit s worried, because Harry is a bad man to have as an enemy. I told you that.

I know you did. Well, we can t go on standing here like this. There s Jean and Froggy. Let s go over there.

They went over there. Jean was Caroline s best friend, and Froggy was one of the group whom Julian regarded as his best friends. He had no single best friend, had had none since college. His best friend in college was with the Standard Oil in China, and he never heard from him except about once a year. With these people Julian felt safe and at ease. Froggy, thirty-four, was not quite five years older than Julian. Froggy had lost an arm in the war, and probably because of that Julian felt less close to him than to the other men of the same age who had been in France. Julian s war record had been made in college, as a member of the S.A.T.C., and he still had the feeling that he should have enlisted to fight and not to go to college. Year by year the feeling grew less strong, and he believed he did not care any more, but he still did. He always did when he saw Froggy for the first time on any day; Froggy, who had been a beautiful swimmer and tennis player. With Jean, Julian had complete ease. Everything that they ever could have been to each other, Jean and Julian had been. They had been passionately in love all one summer long ago; a demi-vierge affair that left them, when it did leave them finally, with a feeling toward each other which was far more innocent than that of two children, and made them ready really to love someone else. Julian knew, because Jean had told him, that she had gone the limit with Froggy the very first night she had a date alone with him, and Julian honestly believed he was glad for her. Now they talked about people who were visiting the So-and-sos; whether the Reading crowd was coming up for the dance; how swell or how perfectly terrible some of the girls looked; whether Julian had had a flat tire, as they had seen his car stopped on the road to the club; wasn t it wonderful, or wasn t it? the way the highway department got the roads clear so quickly; such a lovely corsage; oh, smoke a Camel, you can t tell the difference; Mill s father looks worse than ever; there was one thing about the Ammermanns, and that was when they gave a party they didn t spare the pennies. Then Mill and her mother and father were seen to take their places, standing just inside the ballroom (living-room when the furniture was not cleared away), and forming a little reception line. In less than three minutes there was a milling crowd in the foyer, all waiting to say good evening a bit stiffly to Mr. and Mrs. Ammermann, and a very friendly hello to Mill. The orchestra, Ben Riskin and his Royal Canadians, from Harrisburg, took their places and with two thumps of the bass drum burst forth into (boom boom) Oh, Give Me Something To Remember You By. Now please don t drink too much, said Caroline, and went to find her place at the festive board. II The festive board now groaned under the Baked Alaska. The Ammermann dinner party was just about over. Until one o clock the men, young and old, would see to it that Mill was not left standing without a partner; after that whatever dances she got she would have got without giving the dinner. Tomorrow s papers would carry the list of guests, and then the dinner would be history. Next Christmas the big dinner at the club Christmas dance would be given by someone else. Whatever she did, Mill Ammermann must not give another large dress-up party for at least a year. Tonight s dinner, as almost every guest was able to tell at a glance, was the club s two-fifty dinner. This was a club dinner dance, and all members were invited. At a dinner such as the Ammermann s, the hostess could arrange with the steward for the dollar-fifty (roast chicken), the two-dollar (roast turkey), or the two-fifty (filet mignon), and this had been the filet mignon dinner. The Ammermanns had just that much money, and their position in Gibbsville was just that certain and insecure, that they had to give the best of everything. Conforming to custom, the Ammermanns did not supply drinks, nor did they pay the dance subscriptions. A man on accepting an invitation to the dinner was paired off with a woman or girl. The custom for unmarried, unengaged men was to accept the dinner invitation with his card, and then to telephone the hostess and ask if she wanted him to escort someone to the dinner. All this was arranged beforehand, much more subtly than might be supposed. There were certain sad birds among the girls who had to be invited to many dinners, and it was understood by the hostess that certain men would make themselves available to take these sad birds to the dinner. But it was also understood by every hostess that a popular, attractive young man should not be designated the escort of any but popular attractive girls. Then there was another group of girls, to which Mill Ammermann herself belonged, who got to the dance somehow, usually with a married couple who were friends of hers, or as extra girl on a party of four or six. Mill, and girls like her, could tell almost to the foot how far they would dance, and if they danced more than that distance they could inquire of themselves what was wrong. Usually the answer, to girls like Mill, was that some young husband was sore at his wife and wanted to tell Mill all about it because Mill was such a pal. So understanding. And didn t misunderstand when you gave her what amounted to a rush. Sometimes, of course, Mill and the girls like her would get a real rush by a man who had drunk more than usual. Whatever was cruel about the system, there were some things to be said for it; for one thing, by the time a girl was twenty-five she usually was prepared, knew precisely what to expect, of every dance that she went to. Only a very few girls of Mill s type went to a dance with sadly foolish hopes that this dance would be different from any other. And there was one other unwritten, unspoken agreement among the dancing men: if a Gibbsville girl of doubtful popularity inveigled an out-of-town man to come to a club dance, the Gibbsville men did go a little bit out of their way to see that she made a good showing. They danced with her twice instead of once in a night; with the result that all but the saddest of the sad birds married themselves off to out-of-town men. Of course when they once married their ugly duckling days were forgiven and forgotten; such girls took their places with the most popular girls. But it had to be marriage, not merely an engagement, but the man could be the worst heel, stupid, badly dressed-anything, so long as he was not a Jew. Not that any Gibbsville girl of the country club-Lantenengo Street set ever married a Jew. She wouldn t have dared. By the time a man reached junior year in college he knew how he was situated in the country club social life. Julian, for instance, had known for years that what had happened tonight would always happen: that he would sit at table between one attractive girl and one sad bird. Always the attractive men, or those who were accepted as attractive in Gibbsville, were given a sad bird as a duty and an attractive girl as a reward. The attractive girls far outnumbered the sad birds. On Julian s right sat Jean Ogden; on his left was Constance Walker, who danced as though her sex life depended on it. Constance was a distant cousin of Caroline s. All during dinner Julian s thoughts kept returning to Caroline. Constance, prolonging what had long since ceased to be a slightly amusing tradition, always called Julian, Cousin Julian, or plain Cousin. He danced once with Constance between courses, and he found himself incredulous all over again at her physical resemblance to Caroline. The two girls were almost exactly the same height and weight, and there was no denying that Constance had a lovely figure. Yes, she had it a little on Caroline, or at least he thought she had; she was fresher than Caroline to him. He knew that under a bright light the small of Caroline s back showed an unmistakable patch of down. He knew where the cicatrix of Caroline s vaccination stood out on her left thigh; but though he had seen Constance many times in a bathing suit, he wasn t sure that she had been vaccinated at all. He was thinking of this as he danced with Constance, and he was on the verge of asking her whether she was vaccinated when he became aware that he was holding her tight and she was holding him just as tight, and for good reason. He felt ashamed of himself and sorry for Constance. It was a dirty trick to get this kid excited. It was a low trick to be excited himself. He slowly relaxed his hold. But the process of comparing the girl he was dancing with, eating with, with the girl he had married, who was her cousin, gave him something to enjoy in secret. Whenever he was on a party and did not drink too much he needed a secret game to play or a mental task to perform the while he apparently was observing the amenities. Caroline was thirty-one and Constance was still in college and probably about ten years younger than Caroline. The cousins were pretty good types of their respective colleges: Caroline had gone to Bryn Mawr, Constance was at Smith the plain girl who goes to Smith and competes with the smart Jewesses for Phi Beta Kappa, as distinguished from the pretty girls who go to Smith and write to Yale. Caroline was the perfect small-town girl at Bryn Mawr; from private school in her home town, to a good prep school, to Bryn Mawr and the Bryn Mawr manner, which means quick maturity and an everlasting tendency to enthusiasms. Constance knew everything, but Caroline still was finding things out-the capital of South Dakota, the identity of Mike Pingatore, the location of Dalhousie, the handicap system in polo, the ingredients of a Side Car. He wondered why he put so much stress on the education of the two girls, and then he stumbled upon a truth: that Caroline was an educated girl whose education was behind her and for all time would be part of her background, whereas with Constance and girls like her oh, what difference did it make? Constance was an unimportant little girl. But he was glad he discovered that about Caroline and her education. It was worth remembering, and as happened so often when he made a discovery about her, he wanted to tell Caroline about it, to try it out on her and see if she agreed with it. He knew what she would say. She would say and it would be the truth that she had been telling him practically that for years. The dinner guests stood up and he looked for Caroline. He saw she was too far away to have it worth making a point of going to her. That turned out to be an error in judgment. When the Ammermann dinner party rose, that did not mean all the people eating in the dining room rose too. The Ammermann party was the largest and therefore the most important, but there were many smaller parties of varying size and degrees of importance. One of these was a squat little dinner given by Mrs. Gorman, Harry Reilly s sister. There were eight at her table: two Irish Catholic doctors and their wives; Monsignor Creedon, pastor of the Church of SS. Peter & Paul; and Mr. and Mrs. J. Frank Kirkpatrick, the Philadelphia criminal lawyer and his wife. They were having the two-fifty dinner, and champagne from a bucket under the table, in more or less open defiance of Sec. 7, Rule XI, House Rules & Regulations, Lantenengo Country Club. Mrs. Gorman always went to the big dances at the club, and always she was the hostess at a small dinner, like tonight s. Her guests all took each other for granted after the first awkward politeness. They ate in silence and at the coffee, which was served at the table, the men would sit back and burn their cigars, and the men and women would watch, completely un-self-consciously, the gay folk at the largest dinner party. They would watch without staring except Monsignor Creedon, who would sit with his hands folded somewhat ecclesiastically on the table in front of him, sometimes folding the tinfoil of his cigar, sometimes telling a story in a softly musical voice and a beautifully modulated brogue. He knew everyone in Gibbsville, and he was a member of the club, but he belonged to the club for the golf, and in the dining-room he never spoke to anyone unless he was first spoken to. It was a spurious display of dignity, but it had the right effect on his non-Catholic acquaintances, as well as on his parishioners. He had been made old and philosophical before his time, because Church politics had deprived him, his parish, and Gibbsville of the bishopric they all had been trying for years to get. The Cardinal hated his guts, everyone said, and fought against making SS. Peter & Paul s a cathedral and Father Creedon a bishop. Instead he was elevated to the monsignori, made rural dean and irremovable rector of SS. Peter & Paul s and thereby tacitly informed that he was to discontinue all activity tending to make a cathedral out of SS. Peter & Paul s. It was a sad blow for him as well as for the rich laymen of his parish, who loved Creedon, and for the more powerful Masons in the Coal & Iron Company, who respected this man whom they never could understand. I m a strong Presbyterian, they would say, but let me tell you, nobody says anything against Father Creedon in my hearing and gets away with it, Catholic or no Catholic.