Kane & Abel (1979) (30 page)

William became aware of his housemaster’s wife during his last term at St Paul’s.

Mrs Raglan was a good-looking woman, a little slack around the stomach, and her hips could have been slimmer, but she carried her splendid bosom well, and the thick dark hair piled on top of her head was no more streaked with grey than was becoming. One Saturday when William had sprained his wrist on the hockey field, Mrs Raglan bandaged it for him in a cool compress, standing a little closer than was necessary, allowing William’s arm to brush against her breast. He enjoyed the sensation. On another occasion, when he had a fever and was confined to the sick room for a few days, she brought him his meals herself and sat on his bed, her body touching his legs through the thin covering while he ate. He enjoyed that too.

She was rumoured to be Rags Raglan’s second wife. None of the boys could imagine how Rags had managed to secure even one spouse, and Mrs Raglan occasionally indicated by the subtlest of sighs and silences that she shared something of their incredulity at her fate.

As part of his duties as house captain, William was required to report to Rags every night at ten-thirty once he had completed the lights-out round and was about to go to bed himself. One Monday evening when he knocked on Rags’s door, he was surprised to hear Mrs Raglan’s voice bidding him to enter. She was lying on a chaise longue dressed in a loose silk robe of faintly Japanese appearance.

William kept a firm grasp on the cold doorknob. ‘All the lights are out and I’ve locked the front door, Mrs Raglan. Good night.’

She swung her legs onto the ground, and a pale flash of stockinged thigh appeared momentarily from under the draped silk.

‘You’re always in such a hurry, William. You can’t wait for your life to begin, can you?’ She walked over to a side table. ‘Why don’t you stay and have some hot chocolate? Silly me, I made enough for two - I quite forgot that Mr Raglan won’t be back until Saturday morning.’ There was a definite emphasis on the word ‘Saturday’.

She carried a steaming cup over to William and looked at him to see whether the significance of her remarks had registered. Satisfied, she smiled and passed him the cup, allowing their hands to touch. He stirred the hot chocolate vigorously.

‘Gerald is attending a conference,’ she continued. It was the first time he had ever heard Mr Raglan’s first name. ‘Do shut the door, William, and come and sit down.’

William hesitated; he shut the door, but he did not feel he could sit in Rags’s chair, nor did he want to sit next to Mrs Raglan. He decided Rags’s chair was the lesser of two evils, and moved towards it.

‘No, no,’ she said, and patted the seat beside her.

William shuffled across and sat down nervously by her side, staring into his cup for inspiration. Finding none, he gulped the contents down, burning his tongue. He was relieved when Mrs Raglan stood up. She refilled his cup, ignoring his murmured protest, then moved silently across the room, wound up the Victrola and placed the needle on a record. He was still looking at the floor when she returned.

‘You wouldn’t let a lady dance by herself, would you, William?’

She began swaying in time to the music. William stood up and put his arm formally around her waist, as if they were in the middle of a crowded dance floor. Rags could have fitted in between them without any trouble. After a few bars she moved closer to William, and he stared over her right shoulder fixedly to indicate that he had not noticed that her left hand had slipped from his shoulder to the small of his back. When the music stopped, William assumed he would have a chance to return to the safety of his hot chocolate, but she had turned the record over and was back in his arms before he could sit down.

‘Mrs Raglan, I think I ought to—’

‘Relax a little, William.’

At last he found the courage to look into her eyes. He tried to reply, but he couldn’t speak. Her hand was now exploring his back, and he felt her thigh move gently against his groin. He tightened his hold around her waist.

‘That’s better,’ she said.

They circled the room, closely entwined, slower and slower, keeping time with the music as the record gently ran down. When it stopped she slipped away and switched off the light. William stood in the near dark, not moving, hearing the rustle of silk as he watched her discard her clothes.

The crooner had completed his song, and the needle was still scratching as the record continued to spin. William stood motionless in the middle of the room. Mrs Raglan took off his jacket, then led him back to the chaise longue. He groped for her in the dark, his shy novice’s fingers encountering several parts of her body that did not feel at all as he had imagined they would. He withdrew them hastily to the comparatively familiar territory of her breasts. Her fingers exhibited no such reticence, and he began to feel sensations he had never dreamed possible. He wanted to shout out loud but checked himself, fearing it would wake the boys sleeping above him. She undid his fly buttons, and began to pull off his trousers.

William wondered how to enter her without showing his total lack of experience. It was not as easy as he had expected, and he grew more desperate by the second. Then her fingers moved across his stomach and guided him expertly. But before he could enter her, he had an orgasm.

‘I’m so sorry,’ said William, not sure what to do next. He lay silently on top of her for some time before she spoke.

‘It will be better tomorrow, William. Don’t forget, Rags is not back until Saturday.’

The sound of the scratching record returned to his ears.

Mrs Raglan remained in William’s mind until lights out the next day. That night, she sighed. On Wednesday she panted. On Thursday she moaned. On Friday she cried out.

On Saturday morning, Rags Raglan returned from his conference, by which time William’s education was complete.

At the end of the Easter vacation, on Ascension Day, to be exact, Abby Blount finally succumbed to William’s charms. It cost Matthew five dollars and Abby her virginity. She was, after Mrs Raglan, something of an anticlimax. It was the only event worthy of mention that happened during the entire break, because Abby was whisked off to Palm Beach with her parents, and William spent most of his time shut away with his books, at home to no one other than the grandmothers and Alan Lloyd. As Rags Raglan attended no further conferences, when William returned to St Paul’s he continued to concentrate on his books.

He and Matthew would sit in their study for hours, never speaking unless Matthew had some mathematical equation he was quite unable to solve. When the long-awaited examinations finally took place, they lasted for one brutal week. The moment they were over, both young men felt relaxed, but as the days slipped by and they waited and waited to learn their results, they became less sanguine.

The Hamilton Memorial Mathematics Scholarship to Harvard was based entirely on the final examination results, and was open to every schoolboy in America. William had no way of judging how tough his opposition might be. When, a month later, he’d still heard nothing, he began to assume the worst, and even wondered if Harvard would offer him a place at all.

William was out playing baseball with some other seniors who were trying to kill the last few days of term before leaving school when the telegram arrived; those warm summer evenings when boys are most likely to be expelled for drunkenness, breaking windows or trying to get into bed with one of the masters’ daughters, if not their wives.

William was declaring in a loud voice, to those who cared to listen, that he was about to hit his first home run. ‘The Babe Ruth of St Paul’s!’ declared Matthew. Much laughter greeted this unlikely claim. When the telegram was handed to William by a second-former, home runs were quickly forgotten. He dropped his bat and tore open the little yellow envelope. The pitcher and fielders waited impatiently as he read the communication slowly.

‘Are the Red Sox offering you a contract?’ shouted the first baseman, the arrival of a telegram being an uncommon occurrence during a baseball game.

Matthew strolled across from the outfield to join his friend, trying to make out from his expression if the news was good or bad. William passed the telegram to him. He read it, leapt high into the air, dropped the piece of paper on the ground and accompanied William as he raced around the bases even though he hadn’t actually hit the ball. The catcher picked up the telegram, read it and threw his glove into the bleachers with gusto. The little piece of yellow paper was then passed eagerly from player to player. The last to read it was the second-former, who, having caused so much happiness while receiving no thanks, decided the least he deserved was to know the contents.

The telegram was addressed to Mr William Lowell Kane. It read: ‘Congratulations on winning the Hamilton Memorial Mathematics Scholarship to Harvard, full details to follow. Abbot Lawrence Lowell, President.’ William never did get his home run, as he was heavily set upon by several fielders before he reached home plate.

Matthew looked on with delight as he revelled in his closest friend’s success, but he was sad to think that it meant they might be parted. William felt it, too, but said nothing; they had to wait another nine days to learn that Matthew had also been offered a place at Harvard.

Upon the heels of that news, another telegram arrived, this one from Charles Lester, congratulating his son and inviting him and William to tea at the Plaza Hotel in New York. Both grandmothers sent congratulations to William, but as Grandmother Kane informed Alan Lloyd, somewhat testily, ‘The boy has done no less than was expected of him and no more than his father did before him.’

The two young men sauntered down Fifth Avenue on a balmy afternoon. Girls’ eyes were drawn to the handsome pair, who affected not to notice. They removed their straw boaters as they entered the Plaza at three fifty-nine and strolled nonchalantly into the Palm Court, where the family group was awaiting them. William’s grandmothers flanked another old lady, who he assumed was the Lesters’ equivalent of Grandmother Kane. Mr and Mrs Charles Lester, their daughter Susan, whose eyes never left William, and Alan Lloyd completed the party, leaving two vacant chairs for William and Matthew.

Grandmother Kane summoned the nearest waiter with an imperious gloved hand. ‘A fresh pot of tea and more cakes, please.’

The waiter hurried off to the kitchen. ‘A pot of tea and cream cakes, madam,’ he said on his return.

‘Your father would have been proud of you, William,’ the older man was saying to the taller of the two youths.

The waiter wondered what it was that the good-looking young man had achieved to elicit such praise.

William would not have noticed the waiter at all had it not been for the silver band around his wrist. The piece might easily have come from Tiffany’s; the incongruity of it puzzled him.

‘William,’ said Grandmother Kane. ‘Two cakes are quite sufficient; this is not your last meal before you go to Harvard.’

He smiled at the old lady with affection, and quite forgot about the silver band.

T
HAT NIGHT
, Abel lay awake in his small room at the Plaza, thinking about the young man he’d served that afternoon, whose father would have been proud of him. He realized for the first time in his life exactly what he hoped to achieve. He wanted to be thought of as an equal by the Williams of this world.

Abel had had quite a struggle on his arrival in New York. He had been obliged to share a single small room with George and two of his cousins. As there were only two beds, he could only sleep when one of them was unoccupied. George’s uncle had been unable to offer him a job, and after a few anxious weeks during which most of his savings were spent on keeping himself alive while he searched from Brooklyn to Queens, he finally found work in a large meat packers’ on the Lower East Side. They paid $9 for a six-and-a-half-day week, and allowed him to sleep above the premises. The warehouse was in the heart of an almost self-sufficient little Polish community, but Abel rapidly became impatient with the insularity of his fellow countrymen, many of whom made no effort to speak English.