Around the World With Auntie Mame (12 page)

But I thought the act had gone too far when Auntie Mame gave Amadeo a set of canary diamond studs and links so big that they looked like fog lights. That was enough for me. Boiling mad, I went right to Auntie Mame's room and confronted her with it.

“Listen, Auntie Mame,” I said, “it's one thing to act like a tramp around that louse Latin for Vera's sake . . .”

“Vera! Faugh! What a fool! And I'll thank you to watch your language. Remember, I'm still . . .”

“But when it comes to giving him a present like that— something that must have cost thousands—when there's a depression on and people are . . .”

“Oh, so now the boy economist is telling
me
how
I
shall spend
my
money! Well, listen to me. Keeping Amadeo happy means a great deal to me. . . .”

“What about Basil and your so-called Understanding? About the only thing that remains to understand is how you can keep out of a home for fallen women.”

“Ah, poor child,” she said mysteriously, “what can you know of love?” Then she tittuped to the corridor and cooed, “Amadeo,
chéri
! Come and help me go over my financial statements.”

Amadeo wasn't very intellectual, but when it came to figures he made I.B.M. unnecessary. Having won him with her face, figure, clothes, and jewels, Auntie Mame now laid her cards on the table and gave him a fair picture of just how much dough Beau had left her. Amadeo lit up like a pinball machine and they spent all afternoon in the library poring over Auntie Mame's nest egg. He was the only man I ever saw who could figure oil in millions on top of a desk and grope for a woman's knee underneath it. I was so disgusted I left the room.

I found myself alone with Amadeo before dinner that night and he was unaccustomedly cordial to me—uncomfortably so. He put an arm around my shoulder and called me “Son” twice.

Dinner was horrible. No one spoke, except Auntie Mame and Amadeo, and every so often she'd squeal “Oh, let
go
!” and “No!
Naughty!
” Vera was the first to crack. She threw down her napkin—during salad—and slammed out of the room. The Hon. Basil followed, and then Lady Spavin took to her heels. I was about to leave them alone, too, when Auntie Mame looked earnestly down the table and said: “Please wait for me in my room, my little love. I have something important to say to you.”

Mystified, I went up to her room and waited. After a long time she came in. Pausing dramatically at the open door she said, “Amadeo wants to marry me!”

“Auntie Mame!” I whispered. “You're joking!”

“Joking?” she said, walking into the room. “Why should I joke? He's found me extremely attractive—surely you could see
that
. He asked me in the library this afternoon and I . . .”

“But, Vera . . .” I began.

“Vera will just have to . . .”

“Vera will just have to
what
?” a voice asked. We both looked up and there was Vera standing in the doorway. She was white and tense and she looked ghastly. “
Vera
will just have to what?
” she repeated. She moved ominously toward Auntie Mame.

“W-why, Vera, it's just that Amadeo and I have . . .”

“Lisssen,” Vera hissed. The elegant staginess had left her voice. “Amadeo is mine. I found him and I brought him here. He . . .”

“Vera,” Auntie Mame said, “can't you see by now that he doesn't give a rap for you? He . . .”

“He's been dazzled by you and your dirty low-down tricks. He's been swept off his feet by your diamonds and your money. You've
bought
him, but he doesn't really love you. He loves . . .”

“Vera! How can you buy a man with . . .”

“Shut up!” Vera snarled. “You've broken poor Basil's heart and you've tried to break mine. But you haven't succeeded. Amadeo is mine. I'm going to marry him first thing in the morning. And what's more, I'm going to get back at you for this if it's the last thing I ever do.” She turned on her heel, went down the hall to her own room, slammed the door, and locked it.

“Vera!” Auntie Mame cried, running after her. Then she turned, came back into her own room and shut the door. “She's
not
going to marry Amadeo, not if I have to kill myself.” She turned to me. “Wait here and don't let Vera out of her room. Use force, if necessary. I've got to get to Amadeo first.” She snatched up her bag and her coat and ran downstairs to the library.

“Hey!” I called. But she was out of earshot. A few minutes later I heard the front door slam, a small explosion, and the roar of a car streaming down the driveway. Then there was silence. I watched Vera's door until midnight. There wasn't a thing stirring in the house, so I went to bed.

The next morning I was awakened by what I briefly took to be the end of the world. There was a lot of screaming and shrieking from the lower part of the house and then I heard Vera's heels clattering on the tile floor of the halls. She burst into my room and started vilifying me at the top of her lungs. She was so hysterical that I couldn't make much of what she said except the word “gone,” which she repeated twenty or thirty times. She kept waving a sheet of paper in my face and shouting invective until Lady Spavin marched into the room and called for order. She took the paper away from Vera and read it. “Well,” she said briskly, “they've done what I was afraid they'd do. They've run off together.”

“Wh-
who
?” I asked. Then I realized it was a silly question.

“
Who?
” Vera screamed. “Who, but that dirty, double-crossing . . .”

“Leave the room, Vera,” Lady Spavin said, pushing her out. “I'm afraid, child, that your mad aunt and Amadeo Armadillo have gone to Gretna Green.”

“Greta who?” I said, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.

“It's just an expression, child. Now get up and get dressed.”

DOWNSTAIRS THE PLACE WAS LIKE A WAILING WALL. Vera had more or less composed herself and wept steadily into a lace handkerchief. The Hon. Basil paced up and down working his jaw and cracking his knuckles. Lady Spavin was playing patience. There was no question about it, Auntie Mame and Amadeo had fled in the night, leaving only an incoherent note written by Amadeo—I always suspected he was illiterate— and no forwarding address.

I was so sick and depressed to think that Auntie Mame had fallen into her own trap that I went upstairs and packed. I was also nearly broke and there didn't seem much of anyplace to go except to Auntie Mame's big, empty house in London. By hocking my wrist watch I had just enough to pay for third-class tickets back to England. The compartment on the train was stifling and I was jammed in between two Spanish refugee women—each with a baby. I had no money for food and I was feeling a little giddy when I changed trains at Paris. A glimpse at the headlines of the English-language papers made me feel even worse. The
Continental Daily Mail
had:

FORTUNE HUNTER FLEES
WITH WEALTHY WIDOW

Somewhat less staid, the Paris
Herald
wrote:

MADCAP (MILLIONS) MAME MISSING
KIDNAP PLOT FEARED

After that I went to the lavatory to be good and sick and I remained sick all the way across the Channel.

It was early morning when I got to Grosvenor Square. The house looked dark and empty and there were a lot of reporters milling around in front. So I went around to the mews and cut through the garden. The house had been officially closed and the servants were all gone, the chandeliers hung in big baize bags, and there were ghostly looking dust sheets over all the furniture. I hadn't eaten for two days and I hoped—without much conviction—that there might just be something down in the kitchen to keep me from starving to death.

I felt my way down to the big basement kitchen and groped for a light switch. A tremulous voice said, “P-put your hands up or I'll fire.”

“Auntie Mame,” I said, “it's Patrick.”

“Oh, thank God you've come, my little love,” she said. The lights went on and I saw her huddled at the big kitchen table. She was wearing a woolen robe and, for some reason, a chinchilla cape. “Have a cup of coffee,” she said bleakly. “It's awfully stale and not very good. I made it myself. I have to do everything myself. The servants are all gone and all those reporters out in front keep ringing the bell and calling on the telephone. Oh!” A tear trickled down her cheek.

“Can't your husband send the reporters away?” I asked.

“My what?”

“Your husband!” I said, speaking louder than necessary, as though she were simple.

“Beauregard has been dead for years,” she said coldly. “Have you taken leave of your senses, child?”

“But aren't you married to Amadeo Armadillo?”

“Certainly not!” she snapped.

“Well, are you, um, living in, ah,
sin
?” I asked.

“Really! I'll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head. If you think—”

“But where
is
Amadeo?” I asked desperately.

“I'm sure I couldn't tell you,” she said haughtily, “but if my calculations are anywhere near right he should be on his second day of basic training with the fighting forces of Republican Spain.”

“Where did you leave him, Auntie Mame?”

“When last seen, Amadeo was locked in the toilet of a chartered plane.” Then she looked at her wrist watch. “I expect that by now he's doing about-faces and all that sort of thing. His feet must hurt dreadfully if he's still wearing those patent-leather pumps.”

“But who locked Amadeo in a toilet? What are you . . .”

“I did,” she said with simple eloquence.

“But why did Amadeo want to join the Spanish army?” I said.

“Amadeo! Amadeo! Amadeo! Can't you ever talk about anybody but
him
? Don't you care what happened to
me
? The rigors I've endured?”

“Well, sure, but . . .”

“But what?”

“But I thought you and Amadeo ran off together.”

“As indeed we did. Didn't you read his note?”

“But I thought the two of you were getting married.”

“
I
marry a greaseball like Amadeo when I have a man of Basil's stature on his way to me at this very moment? Don't be ridiculous!”

“Auntie Mame, I just don't understand.”

“Well, if you'd only stop interrupting, I'd tell you. Oh, how little you know of the pioneer woman's trials and tribulations, you crossing the Continent in a deluxe railway carriage.”

“So begin,” I said.

“Well,” Auntie Mame said, “I just knew that it was no good showing up Amadeo as the louse he is when he was always on hand to lure poor Vera back into his web. So I decided that the only thing to do was to elope with him and get him a good long distance from Biarritz. I didn't want to do it, but when Vera threatened to fling herself at his feet, I realized it had to be done. And a pretty penny it cost, too.”

“Including those canary diamond studs and cuff links,” I said hotly.

“Oh, those! They were just some yellow glass things that I ripped off an old tennis dress and threw into a Cartier box. He won't find that out until he tries to hock them, which should be about now.”

“Go on,” I said.

“I'm trying to. So, when Vera said that she was going to marry Amadeo the very next morning, I dashed downstairs to Pinchbottom—oh, Patrick, darling, that Amadeo's a pincher, too; a real menace. And I said, ‘Fly with me!' And then I gave him a check for a hundred thousand dollars. . . .”

“A hundred thou . . .”

“To be signed when we said, ‘I do.' Then I got Ito to drive us out to the airport and all the time I kept plying Amadeo with brandy. Oh, Patrick, that man can drink as well as pinch. I pumped enough brandy into him to fill a swimming pool and of course his nasty hands were all over me. Well, the only plane that was around was a private one that belonged to this darling Danish flier, and so I chartered it. I said to the pilot, ‘What's the most godforsaken place you know?' and he said, ‘Brönderslev, Denmark, madam. Where I come from.' So then I said, ‘Wouldn't you like to go home for a little visit?' and
he
said, ‘Not on your life, madam.' But I gave him a lot more money and he was very charming after that.”

“I'll bet he was,” I said.

“Of course Amadeo thought I was taking him to Paris, and he was pretty drunk by then, anyhow. Well, it was a terrible flight. The weather was simply unbelievable and I was almost beside myself, what with being tossed around from cloud to cloud and that repugnant Amadeo pawing me. Well, I'd planned to get off at Paris and just let Amadeo keep on going north. But that awful man simply would
not
pass out. You can imagine how I felt when I heard we were over Germany—and here Amadeo was still conscious. To make matters even worse, he'd finished all the brandy and was howling for more.”

“So what did you do, Auntie Mame?”

“Well, happily I had a bottle of
Nuit de Noël
in my purse— thirty bucks an ounce, if you please—so I just emptied it into a paper cup and gave it to Amadeo.”

“Did he
drink
it?”

“Like a fish. And the perfume seemed to turn the trick. He grew deathly pale and just made it to the rest room.”

“What then?”

“Then I locked him in.”

“But how did you . . .”

“Stop interrupting. Well, I went up to the pilot's little sort of driver's seat and said that Amadeo was sick and did the pilot think he could do any tricks that would make him sicker. You know, sort of arouse Amadeo's gastric juices. Well, that adorable Dane did things with a plane that I didn't know were possible. First he wrote my name and then he wrote his own. His name, by the way, was Jørgen Årup Hansen and he even flew back to put in all those diagonals and accent marks that Danes
will
use. Then he gave me a liverwurst sandwich.”