The Golden Calves (9 page)

"You mean you've been sweet-talking the old girl out of her last penny and bibelot” was her sour comment. “Really, you curators are the limit! And you have the nerve to talk about lawyers. Is there a single brassiere or pair of panties you haven't wheedled out of the poor creature?”

"I'm only doing what your boss told me to do,” he retorted hotly. "I'm following the advice of your sacred firm.”

“Why? You're not its bond slave like me. What's the point of being an unpaid prostitute? In your shoes I'd at least claim the luxury of independence from Claverack.”

"Even if he could make you director of the museum?”

“What's the point of being that if you're still at his beck and call? At least if I get to be his partner I'll have a voice in the running of his firm. But it looks to me as if he'll have you so tied up, you won't be able to call your soul your own. If you still have a soul at that point.”

"Is that so? Well, you may find that Sidney Claverack's director is quite as independent as his law partner. Particularly if he has Miss Speddon's spiritual heir behind him!”

“Oh, so that's it. I
see.
We are counting on Miss Vogel, are we? No wonder you've been so assiduous in your attentions recently. Did I compare you two to Higginson and Emily Dickinson? Forgive me for the wrong literary reference. I should have looked to Henry James. It's
The Aspern Papers,
isn't it? You get the treasure if you marry the old girl's niece. Except it's not the niece but the companion, the dim, rather faded companion. No doubt she will perk up—or even blossom—when she hears the hot vows of her passionate if slightly mercenary director.”

"Chessie, you're absolutely impossible!" He rose and put down his unfinished drink. “And if you think for a minute I'm going out to dinner with you after that—”

“Heavens, no! Call Miss Vogel. No doubt she's crouching by the phone, waiting for the sound of her master's voice. But we don't like the word ‘master,' do we? It reminds us unpleasantly of degrees we don't have. Very well, her B.A.'s voice.”

Mark left the apartment without deigning to reply. In a booth at the corner drug store he tele phoned Miss Speddon's house. "Are you free for dinner?” he asked abruptly when he got Anita. “I've something important to discuss. It's about Miss Speddon.”

"They're just about to bring me something on a tray.”

"Tell them to freeze it. Meet me at Leon's at Fifty-third and Third. Twenty minutes?”

He took her startled silence for assent and hung up.

At the restaurant, Waiting for Anita, he drank off first one and then another large Martini. As soon as he felt the humming calm in his head from the rapid dosage, he tried to focus his attention on the problem of being honest with himself. He liked to think that he always at least tried to be this, but for half a dozen hours now he had been living in a state of near euphoria.

To begin with, he asked himself, would a man in love find it necessary to brace himself with two strong drinks while waiting for the object of his affections? No. Certainly not.

But did this have to imply an aversion to poor Anita? A dread of intimacy? The possibility of impotence in the marriage bed, supposing it were to come to that? No. The only thing that really bothered him about Anita as a woman was her intensity. If she could be drunk or drugged, he could imagine her slim body as something pleasant to possess. He liked to imagine her submitting to him in spite of herself, giving in to an uncontrollable body urge, rather than to a noble and lofty passion that sought its excuse in one that matched it.

Was he then simply apprehensive that she would despise him if she were to suspect his motives? That she could never hope to love on such a basis? Yes. Which had to mean, didn't it, that he really despised those motives himself? And yet why should he? Had not millions of males married in part for personal advantage? Had it not been the rule rather than the exception throughout recorded history that dower should rank romance? Was "love, love, love” not recognized the world over as a uniquely American phenomenon, and not always taken seriously even there? What was the point of lashing one's back for what everyone else felt and did?

What he really wanted, he supposed in a burst of candor with himself, was an Anita who would come to him out of simple duty, an Oriental bride with downcast eyes, delivered by her father, with the dowry of a herd of oxen, to the vigorous embraces of a stranger which she would find unexpectedly delightful. That was it! If he and Anita were only expected to screw for the museum, screw for Miss Speddon's collection, they might be wonderfully paired! Why did life have to be unnecessarily complicated?

And there she was, moving quickly towards him between the tables, in her unmistakable self-deprecatory way, yet with a kind of self-possession, too, as if, in apologizing for brushing against the back of someone's chair, she nonetheless insisted on the necessity of her doing so because she was on a mission from someone whose command was absolute. Their eyes met, and she offered him a stiff little smile.

As she slipped into the chair opposite, she glanced at his empty glass. "I'm glad you haven't waited for me.”

“Oh, I've had a couple,” he replied with affected ease. He hailed the waiter and ordered two more. "Frankly, I wanted the start on you because I've got something rather difficult to say. I had a talk with Miss Speddon this morning. She told me about her heart.”

“Of course, you had to know,” she said in a low voice, unfolding her napkin.

"There's something very much on her mind. Something she's anxious to have cleared up before she goes.”

She looked up sharply. "And what is that?”

“She's got it into her head that you and I should get married. And she'd like to have some assurance of this before she dies.”

"Oh dear, I was afraid she was going to say something like that.”

Mark was astonished at her tone. Was it possible that the old girl had taken her into her confidence? “Is the idea so repulsive to you?”

"I don't think I have to answer that. Any relationship between you and me would be a matter quite independent of what Miss Speddon thought or wished.”

“Is that really so? When she cares so much? And when she may be dying?”

He noted the flicker of pain across her brow. “What are you getting at, Mark?"

“Well, would it be a mortal sin if you were to tell her that, yes, something might be going to happen between you and me? She hates the idea of leaving you alone in the world. She feels that she's helped herself to great slices of your life—''

"It's not true! It's not true!” Suddenly she was almost sobbing.

He decided to wait for the drinks before going on. When they came, he observed how eagerly she reached for hers. He began to feel on surer ground.

“It doesn't really matter whether it's true or not,” he went on now. “What matters is the peace and security that you could so easily give her in her last weeks or months.”

Her suspicion was now tinted with something close to hostility. “Why are you suddenly taking such a great interest in Miss Speddon's peace of mind?"

“Because she's the patron saint of the museum I love!” he rang out roundly. Oh, he had the right note now! “Because we owe her so much and are going to owe her more. Because she's the greatest collector of Americana in the country. And because I've come to be devoted to her. I didn't hesitate to tell her what she wanted to hear from me!”

“What was that?” She looked almost scared.

“Why, that I was willing to marry you, of course. There is no point doing things halfway.”

"You had no objection to telling her a bare-faced lie?"

"A lie? Who's to say it's a lie? Who knows what might develop between you and me in the future? Why should I make a dying woman miserable by telling her that something is never going to happen that for all I know, and for all
you
know, could happen?”

“I thought you had other commitments.”

“I have no commitments, Anita. I told Miss Speddon that, and it's true. Chessie Norton and I are not engaged.”

“Well, maybe not engaged exactly..."

"We've been lovers, if that's what you mean. Have you never had a lover?"

“Actually, I have.”

He tried not to show his surprise. He even found a moment to wonder whether he might not actually be jealous. The wretched Sweeters must have got further than he had supposed. “Well, then there is no reason that we should not be sophisticated and realistic in such matters."

"I think there are lots of reasons.”

"But none that should keep you from giving poor Miss Speddon the reassurance she needs.”

"Why must she have it from me when she's already had it from you?”

"Because she told me so.”

She gaped. “She did?”

“Of course she did. Do you think she takes it for granted that you'd have me?”

“Yes!”

At this she covered her face with both hands and remained silent for so long that he was uneasily aware that people were beginning to stare.

"Please, Anita.”

"Mark, I want to go home. I don't want any dinner.”

“Oh, surely now...”

"If I'm going to think about this at all I've got to be alone.” She turned to the waiter, who was approaching with the menu cards. “Will you bring us the check, please? I'm afraid we can't stay. I'm not feeling well.”

In the taxi, while she sat huddled in a corner, staring out the window, he felt the elation of the last cocktail, which had been a double. It had worked out almost too well. For he was convinced that she would be unable to withhold from her beloved mistress this final consolation, and he was also persuaded that Miss Speddon would not tell Anita about the will change. She would know that Anita would be opposed to it and would dread the weariness of the argument necessarily entailed. He would have gained what he wanted without the risk of Anita's counterarguments. And without committing himself to Anita!

And then, as if he had fallen out of the suddenly opened door of the cab and struck his head on the sidewalk, the blow of depression fell. How could he, nice Mark Addams, be such an utter shit?

"Anita,” he murmured, reaching for her hand, “Anita, listen to me. You mustn't think I have no feeling about all this. I meant that about the future. Who
is
to tell what might happen between you and me?”

"Oh, Mark, shut up, please.”

"I mean it!”

"Just because you've had too many cocktails.”

"And what did you mean when you said that you knew Miss Speddon took for granted you'd have me? Why?”

"Never mind!”

"It's because you do care about me, isn't it?” Reaching over now, he took her firmly by the shoulders and pressed his lips to hers. She resisted fiercely, but only for a moment before she returned his kiss with ardor. Then suddenly she broke roughly away. The cab had pulled up before Miss Speddon's house, and she was out of it and gone without a word.

M
ARK
did not have to face repercussions from the little scene in the taxi, for the very next day Miss Speddon suffered another heart attack, and Anita did not reappear at the museum for the remaining three weeks of the old lady's life. Although the latter retained her mental faculties to the end, as evidenced by the new will that she executed, her younger companion felt she had to be constantly available to supervise the household and check on the nurses. And when she did return to her office, the day after the crowded funeral, where she had sat like a wraith in the front pew with Miss Speddon's nephew and niece, her demeanor did not invite any reference to osculation in cabs. She seemed a new presence, even soberer and more silent than before, yet possessed of a new air of confidence, a confidence, it seemed, not so much in herself as in the representative of the now divine deceased. She even addressed Mark as "Mr. Addams”!

But he had little difficulty in persuading himself that this was for the best. His life had suddenly exploded into a success so dazzling that he was going to need all his energies just to keep his balance. The role of women, Chessie as well as Anita, could be suspended for a time. Miss Speddon's will, which named Claverack executor and bequeathed her “chattels" and two thirds of her fortune outright to the museum, had been admitted to probate without contest, and shortly thereafter the chairman had summoned his trustees to executive session and informed them of the role Mark had played in persuading the testatrix to place such confidence in their institution. He had then asked and received their assent to Mark's appointment as permanent director.

The golden sky of Mark's new happiness, however, like most such celestial canopies, had a few intrusive clouds. He and Chessie had ceased to see each other since the night of their quarrel about Anita, but her legal duties to the Speddon estate brought her on occasion to the museum, and now she loomed in his doorway to raise her right arm in a mock salute.

“Hail to thee, Macbeth!"

"Which witch are you?”

“The one that gave Banquo the better news.”

"You agree with him that I played 'most foully' for it?”

She made a pincers movement with her forefinger and thumb. "Not foully. Just a teensy weensy bit unethically. Nothing, really, in the world we live in.”

Mark reddened. "I presume Miss Speddon's honorable counsel would not have sanctioned the will had there been any funny business.”

"Oh, that's true enough. I'm not talking about anything as ugly as ‘undue influence.' But there are degrees in what I at least consider permissible persuasion. A testator of sound mind can still be bamboozled a bit.”

“And you are suggesting that I bamboozled Miss Speddon?”

“Let's put it that you can be very charming, Mark. When you want to be.”

“And let's put it that now is not one of those times.”