House Party (10 page)

Manning retained his dreamy, wistful, faraway expression until he heard Mrs. Clendenning say "Isn't he
gorgeous!"
in a whisper which could carry to Montauk, then he favored the oldsters on the beach with a dazzling smile and a debonair wave.

This morning he was wearing army surplus slacks—there was something so unquestionably smart about those old suntans—a shirt of white lawn, and custom-made espadrilles. For good measure he carried a cashmere sweater. Conservative, that was the ticket. If anyone knew how a gentleman dressed, it was Manning. He could have written a Ph.D. thesis on the subject.

But somehow he could never avoid a tiny touch of the apache. The slacks had been taken in just a bit too much to display the lean hips and muscular thighs. The belt was buckled a notch too tightly. The shirt, a shade too sheer, was undone just one button too many at the throat. His nails—all twenty of them—were a trifle too long, too glossy. As Mrs. Laura Romeyn Gray Richardson Anderson had screamed at him some years ago: "Manny, you couldn't resist that extra drop of brilliantine anymore than I can resist throwing this glass at your God-damned beautiful head!” Then she let fly—an impetuous gesture that accounted not only for their parting, but also for the tiny scar on Manning's otherwise perfect brow.

With just the proper amount of suave boyishness, he bowed over the hands of Mrs. Ames and Mrs. Clendenning—not quite a kiss, tint the implication of one—and favored Uncle Ned with a manful “Good morning, sir."

"Ah, dear boy," Uncle Ned said, "how splendid you're looking him! how well you fit into this simple, rural American scene." Uncle Ned could never forgive himself for being an American.

"Thank you, sir, and what an air of the Continent
you
lend."

"Oh, Lily," Violet sighed, "isn't it just like being at a Noel Coward play to hear these gentlemen."

"Yes, Violet, it is. One which I saw in either 1928 or '29." Then Mrs. Ames felt that she had been rude and smiled up at Manning. "Not going in swimming?"

Manning made a swift mental note to take it easy with Kathy's mother. Unlike most of the older women he had captivated, this one
wasn't quite such a pushover. "Yais," he said. "Yais, I think a bathe would be fust rate." Then he translated into Americanese and said: "Yes, I think I'll go in." He favored the assemblage with a flashing grin, casting an especially soft paternal smile upon Robin and Emily who were destroying a sand castle, and went lithely off to the bath house.

Ordinarily Manning preferred to be seen in one of his twelve pairs of French Riviera bathing trunks—a model which could be described only as a jockstrap with a seat in it. Discreetly padded, they showed to best advantage almost all of his copper tan and the loins which had made so many hearts beat faster. With only a twinge of regret, Manning stepped into his slim Bronzini shorts, pulled the drawstring terribly tight, cast a long, admiring glance at his reflection, and congratulated himself once more on his conservatism. Covered from waist to midthigh as he was meant depriving Kathy of a better view of the merchandise, but she seemed pretty well sold as it was and there was nothing quite like an air of mystery.

Manning's reverie at the mirror was interrupted by a sharp scream and a faint stream of blasphemy, "Oh my God, this bloody zipper!” It was Felicia.

"I say," Manning called, "anything the matter?"

"Anything the
matter?
This zipper's caught half way up the back and it's practically taken my hide off!"

"Cahn't I help?" Manning asked, springing from his cubicle.

"Yes, would you?" Felicia emerged, more or less covered by black satin bathing suit, its zipper at half mast along her spine.

"It's nothing too bad, rally," Manning said, "just a little nip."

"Easy now, please. Oh! Oh, there now, that feels wonderful."

"It's all in knaowing how," Manning said.

"You've been perfectly marvelous, darling. Nothing like this start the day off right."

"Believe me, the pleasure was all mine," Manning said.

Unseen and unheard, Paul stood in the doorway for just a second, and then slunk silently away. "Poor Kathy," he said softly, "poor old Kathy." He waited a full two minutes in the shrubbery and then he appeared, waving and shouting at the top of his lungs, "Good morning, Mother! Aunt Violet! Uncle Ned! Hi, kids!" He heard his mother gasp "What in the world has ever come over Paul?" Then, with a great deal of coughing, stomping his tennis shoes as loudly as possible on the porch of the bath house, he entered again. Felicia and Manning were just leaving, their expressions bland behind dark glasses.

"Oh, it's you, Paul," Felicia said. "I thought it was a Comanche raid."

"Good morning, Paul," Manning said casually.

"Morning, Stone," Paul snarled and pulled the dressing-room curtain shut behind him with a snap. They certainly were composed, that pair—cool as cucumbers.

Looking again at his graduation wristwatch, Joe Sullivan decided that now he really would have to make an appearance. The noise from the beach told him that even the idle rich were awake. He felt like hell. He'd drunk too much last night and slept badly. He'd forgotten to bring aspirin and the nick he'd given himself shaving that morning refused to heal beneath the inexpert patch of toilet paper he'd applied.

He had tossed all night. At six he had awakened for the day. Snapping on a lamp, he'd paced up and down the large bedroom for un hour. He had seen his manuscript lying on the chest of dm wars and wished that there had been a fireplace in the room so that he could have burned the whole book dramatically, although his publisher had a carbon; return the advance, although he had spent most of it; and take the first train back to Indiana. Of course he’d have had to leave Elly some kind of farewell note. He had pondered over its wording. Allegorical:
"Ave atque vale?'
Or should it have been offhand and debonair: "It was great fun, but it was just one of those things?" Or . . . "Nuts!" Joe had said, lighting a cigarette.

There was a ponderous French bookcase in his room, ugly as hell but undoubtedly valuable. With a good deal of struggling and lugging, he opened one of the cupboard doors, long held shut by a folded Colony Club matchbook. It was filled with old books. At least he could read something. The collection would ordinarily have amused Joe. This morning it had enraged him. He found a copy of
The Good Earth,
an old Magoffin and Henry Latin textbook of Kathy's,
The Bridge of San Luis Rey,
which he had no intention of rereading,
Little Men,
a 1931
Social Register,
and a tome entitled
Diseases of the Horse.
"Jesus," he snarled, "they're not even cultured! I bet they never read
one
of the books in Pop’s library." He finally extracted a copy of
Eleanor,
by Mrs. Humphrey Ward, which he decided to read as a symbol of his dead love Eleanor Ames, but finding the book long, the type small, and Mrs. Ward's punctuation marks limited to the one-em dash, he put back on its dusty shelf.

He finally selected a yellowing copy of Michael Arlen's
These Charming People.
"Just, what these empty-headed parasites
ought
to be reading," he sneered, "foolish, pointless, dated, passé, junk. With the righteous feeling of a Vatican censor, Joe stretched out
on his bed and began to read.

Hours passed. Finally Joe closed the book and looked at watch. "Eleven o'clock! Jesus!" he breathed. Now he was furious with himself for having spent five hours reading such decadent tripe and even more furious for having enjoyed it. Slamming the book down, he got up and headed for breakfast.

"Lutie," Jonas said, "this is too much! Eleven o'clock and couple of those society sybarites still not down to breakfast. Twelve people to feed for lunch in two hours and this week's
New Republic
hasn't even come yet. Why we ever came out to this. . . .”

"Here comes one of them now," Lutie said.

"Oh, Christ!" Jonas groaned. He stomped to the terrace door, then his face split into a jovial smile. "Mawnin' Mistah Sullivan suh. Lubbly mawnin', suh. What'll it be? Kin ah fix you a nice aig?" A tip was a tip.

Claire did up the six buttons which made her trousers cling smartly around the calf. These trousers were far and away
the
newest thing. A famous designer had adapted them from the pant worn by Cypriote goatherds. They were much tighter than toreador trousers and infinitely smarter. Next year, of course,
everybody
would be wearing them—even women who shouldn't—but right now they were exclusive with Claire's firm and practically exclusive with Claire. She smoothed down her blouse, adapted by the same famous designer, from a Portuguese vintner's smock; adjusted the bracelet adapted from an Indo-Chinese handcuff; and thrust her long, lean feet into thong sandals adapted from a pair in a Vun der Weyden drawing of Jesus. Claire had doubts about the sandals. There was a rumor along upper Fifth that they'd already been copied, strap for strap, in the two-ninety-five market. Even so, the costume was indescribably smart. Snatching up her purse—an adaptation of a cuissar's rucksack—she made her fashionable way down the stairs.

She was disappointed to find only Joe Sullivan at breakfast. If there was anything she disliked it was these simple, sullen men who had absolutely no small talk. He was probably nobody, but then you couldn't be sure. A lot of very smart men nowadays were affecting this tough, taciturn Abe Lincolnish sort of act—she did hope that it wouldn't last—and besides, you can catch more flies with . . . "Good morning," Claire said in her loveliest gracious lady voice. "Isn't it heavenly out here today? Of course, I
adore
town, but I must say that for a change—just over weekends, you know—there's nothing like the country. Don't you find that here in the East we tend to . . “

"I wouldn't know," Joe said, putting his coffee cup down with a thump. "I'm from the middle west, myself."

"But, of course. So am I. An old Chicago girl. I used to know downs of Sullivans all up and down the Drive. Then there were the Astor Street Sullivans and the Walton Place Sullivans and the . . . just
café noir
for me, please."

"I've only been to Chicago once in my life," Joe said belligerently. "I was five years old and it was to see the World's Fair. All I remember is the Sky Ride and the Flying Turns and getting sick from frozen custard. I come from a little town in Indiana. You've probably never even heard of it. It's called Mooseheart. It's about thirty miles from Bloomington."

Claire looked not only blank but stunned. So now Joe let her really have it.

"Well, I guess you've never heard of Bloomington, either. The university's there. They have
Parsifal
every year on Good Friday. It's pretty well known."

Claire rapidly collected her thoughts. It did seem to her that there was a firm named something like Parsifal that put out moderate-priced sports things. "Oh, yes. Parsifal. Rahther good lines."

"Rather tiresome libretto,
I
think," Joe said sadistically. "Or maybe you've heard of Kinsey. You know,
sex.
He's at the university, too. I went there."

Claire's jaw sagged.

"Well, anyhow," Joe went on—now he forced his voice to rasp, "'Pop's the principal at Mooseheart High and Mom teaches piano when she feels like it." Then, out of cold fury, Joe went into complete fiction, "But Mom's got dropsy something terrible. Can't hardly take care of the hogs no more and she's worried sick about my kid sister, Pearl"—Joe was an only child—"who's in the reform school now because she was caught selling cocaine to the steel workers in Gary. Pearl's gotta have her baby right in the sick ward of the home for delinquent girls and she's only fourteen, but Mom said that
she
was just thirteen when I was born and later, when Pop married her . . ."

"Excuse me," Claire said. She swayed from the table into the cool dark library. He's kidding, she told herself. Of course he's, kidding. What would he be doing here if . . . Then she pressed her hands hard into her temples. I've got to find Paul. I've got to find him right away. I can't stand any more poor people—uncouth, horrid . . . Claire raced out of the front door. She was conscious of just two things—seeking Paul and avoiding Joe. Claire knew nothing of the grounds surrounding the house. Only instinct guided her. So that Joe couldn't possibly see her, she ran behind the boxwood hedge, oblivious to the deep scratch her arm received as she brushed past it. She ran and ran, the straps of her sandals digging deep into the flesh of her feet. At last, breathless, she reached the edge of the cliff. Below her lay the beach, populated by nice people—by people of grace and means and charm and security. Paul stood ankle-deep in the water.

"Paul!" Claire shouted. "Paul!"

Every head turned. The only people who seemed oblivious to her were John Burgess and Kathy out on the raft. "Good morning, Miss Devine," Mrs. Ames called.

"Ah, the lovely Claire.
Claire de lune,"
Mr. Pruitt began.
"Dites
moi
. .
.”

"What a cunning little outfit! Felicia, do look, darling . . "

"Paul!" Claire called.

Paul Ames turned and rushed across the sand.

"Paul," Mrs. Ames cried,
"don't
go up on the lawn before you change!" Then she wondered what asininity ever made her say such a foolish thing.

In a bound he was up the cliff and at Claire's side.

"What is it, darling?" he breathed.

"Paul. Come. I've
got
to see you!” Claire, sobbing, pulled him after her. They dashed across the garden and into the forest, Paul's wet bathing trunks flapping at his sides. Her nails digging into his thin wrist, Claire dragged him behind her until she dropped onto the ground. He fell at her side and she wound her arms around his neck and wept into his sharp collarbone. "Paul, Paul," she sobbed. "I've looked everyplace for you
. . .
I wanted you so . . . so terribly bad . . . I thought you
. . .
I had to . . ." Her throat contracted and she could say no more. She simply lay miserably on a gnarled root sobbing in Paul's arms.

Once—just once—before had she ever cried so. It was when she was a little girl at nursery school. Mom was supposed to call for her at six, after the store closed. But they were taking inventory at the store and the woman who ran the nursery school had told Claire that she'd have to spend the night up in the dormitory. The dun-colored walls, the coarse sheets, the pervasive odor of urine had terrified Claire. She'd bitten her tongue to keep from shrieking until Mom arrived at half-past ten in her black crepe dress and her easy-payments Persian lamb coat, smelling of Evening in Paris perfume. Then Claire had broken down. She'd clung to Mom like life itself; buried her face into the tight, kinky Persian pelt, wet with snow and her own tears. "Don't be so silly, honey," Mom had said in her tired voice. "Nothing's gonna hurt my little girl. Now c'mon, honey. Get dressed and well go to the chink's for some chow mein. Then we'll hop on the El an' go home and everything’ll be all comfy-cosy for my little princess.”

"Paul, oh, Paul," she sighed

"My God, Claire. Claire, I love you more than anything else in the world. Do you hear me, Claire? I want you to marry me. I want you to marry me right away. Claire!" His lips pressed against hers and he kissed her for a long, long time.

Hungrily Claire kissed him back. Heedless of her mouth so carefully applied with a sable brush, Claire devoured Paul's lips. Comforted and secure once more, Claire let her head fall back. She took a deep breath and sighed. Everything was all right once again, Gradually she came back to life. How terribly thin Paul was—skin and bones, really. Well, that was all to the good. Thin people wore their clothes so much better. I suppose I can bring him around to dressing really well, she thought. His chest was awfully hairy, too. Claire felt a faint wave of distaste. On Gary Cooper, of course, that was smart—that long torso and the bearskin rug for a chest—but with so many good depilatories on the market . . . Paul kissed her again and held her tightly to the chest she was really beginning to find repugnant.

“. . . didn't you ever tell me before?” Paul was saying. "I've been going crazy just wanting
. . ."

I'm making four thousand, Claire thought, I suppose he makes five or six and there must be some sort of private income. We could live . . .

". . . buy you a ring as soon as we get back to town, but in the meantime just wear this." Paul took off his signet ring and slipped it onto Claire's finger.

"Oh, Paul darling," Claire said with a silvery laugh. She was composed once again, thank God. "It's miles too big. But I'll wear it on my big finger. See, that fits. It's rather smart, too. Ludmilla What's-her-name—you know, she's that beautiful Czechoslovakian star at the Met—wears a big gold ring on
her
index finger. She can't get it off, either, and it's the envy of . . . "

"Claire, please darling, please don't . . ." Paul's face fell against hers. "Claire, I love you so much that I . . "

"Paul, we've
got
to get up. Just look at me. I'm covered with bugs and old leaves and . . . Oh, heavens, I've scratched myself hideously and I'll bet my face is a perfect sight and . . . Really, I don't know
what
your mother must think of me." She laughed prettily. "A fine daughter-in-law I’ll make if I don't fix myself up and go right down and apologize for the way I've carried on. Now, Paul, let me up this minute—please,
darling."