The Plot

The Plot

Evelyn Piper

CHAPTER ONE

“Badevil,” Maum Cloe said. The words, which she made into one, flew like a bat to the far corner of the kitchen, and hung there.

Jamey, being literary, would have been reminded immediately of
Macbeth
. The huge, shadowy kitchen was the heath, the First Witch, Maum Cloe, was bending over an iron soup kettle, stirring, stirring the she-crap soup with one hand, the letter in the other, her gray-brown skin wreathed in, swathed in, steam while her son, William Reas, and her grandson, Joseph Reas, stood silently behind her. Jamey, being James Gillespie Vaughn,
the
Jamey Vaughn,
the
author, would certainly have thought of the heath, of
Macbeth
, of murder.

Joseph Reas had just told Maum Cloe how the strange young man had appeared up the road from Charleston, dusty, dirty, tired, with this letter for Jamey. Joseph Reas, summoned to the big gate by the bell, had liked the young man. He had been friendly, Joseph Reas considered, put on no airs, admitted that he did not know Mr. Jamey and that his business with Mr. Jamey was of his own making, but when Joseph Reas had informed him that Mr. Jamey saw no one, that it was no use to wait there, he wouldn't go away. Joseph Reas had consulted his father, and William Reas, as usual, had brought the problem to his mother.

Maum Cloe turned the thick letter in her hand, sniffed it, weighed it. She lifted the old wooden spoon into the air, bent her head, sucked a little of the soup into her withered old lips, and then smacked them thoughtfully. Her clawlike hand reached out to the wooden salt box on the wall, her skinny fingers pinched up some salt, scattered it like a charm into the soup, then she bent over the upwreathing steam, apparently seeking her answer in the kettle. When she straightened up, her voice was firm. “Go for to bring Miss Ethel the letter, Joseph Reas. Tell her Maum Cloe say send him away. Maum Cloe is oneasy, say.” She gave Joseph Reas the envelope and dismissed him.

The two men looked at each other and shrugged. She was finished, no amount of questioning would evoke an explanation. A few minutes later, Maum Cloe heard the motor of the car starting up the road to the new house. She nodded.

Ethel Spock, with the envelope containing the letter in her left hand, raised her right hand to knock on the great mahogany door, shook her head, and let her right hand drop. She glanced down at the letter, raised her hand once more, and held it in the air while she considered the matter.

If Ethel had ever been a creature of impulse, being Jamey Gillespie Vaughn's secretary for ten years had curbed her; careful, careful thought was necessary before disturbing Jamey at—she raised her left hand closer to her pale-blue eyes to see her wrist watch—at eleven
A
.
M
. From nine in the morning until noon, Jamey, behind the great door, closeted in his study, was presumably at work and not to be disturbed. The fact that Ethel knew he was not working, not writing anything, not planning to write anything, but merely practicing his individual form of yoga, his special merging in imagination with the great writers of the world, made no difference. Her hand trembled.

The South Carolina sun was brilliant this morning. It was May. The button that rolled the great glass window into the wall would have been pushed, the handle that tilted the plastic louvers would have been turned so that the sun came in across Jamey's lounge chair. Jamey would have removed the white cashmere monk's robe that he kept on while the mornings were chilly. He would be lying on the foam-rubber chaise longue naked except for his silk bathing shorts. He would have pushed the button that controlled the mechanism to roll up the great rug, and one bare brown foot with its lacquered nails would be touching the dark-blue tiles to spread their coolness through his body. If—Ethel glanced down at her own hand with the thick wedding ring—if she knocked on the door and he said, “
Entrez, entrez
!” he would open first one and then the other of his wrinkled eyelids and stare down her presumption with his beady eyes. “My dear girl,” Jamey would say, squeaking, “my dear girl, it
can't
be twelve yet!”

Ethel Spock swallowed and, not giving herself time to reconsider, knocked sharply, twice.

While Jamey said, “My dear girl, it
can't
be twelve yet,” Ethel reached into the breast pocket of her blue flowered voile dress with the tired ruffles and pulled out her reading glasses; when he was ready for her explanation, she was ready for him. “I know. I couldn't wait until lunch, Jamey. I'm very sorry to disturb you, but I felt I had to.”

“Had to do something I distinctly forbid?”

“I had to.” She held up the envelope for him to see. “I have a letter I must read to you. The young man who wrote it is waiting outside the big house gate. He walked to the plantation from Charleston. Joseph Reas is here with the car to give him your message.”

“Why do I have to give him a message? That is your duty, my dear girl. You know I don't see anyone.” He giggled wickedly. “
Even
young men.” The bare leg hanging over the edge of the chaise wagged in irritation. “You should know that by now, Ethel. I see no one.”

“I know. He knows, too, Jamey, he knew when he wrote this, but he says he won't go away. Please, may I read this to you?” She waved the letter.

“You may not. I assume the young man is, or wishes to be, an author. I don't wish to read the letters of aspiring young authors. I do not criticize, or suggest, or praise. I am seventy-eight years old, my dear girl, and I have no time to waste.” He glared at her, then closed his eyes.

“I know all that, Jamey; nevertheless, I simply could not take the responsibility of sending him away. You must tell me what to do.” She sat fussily on the chair facing the chaise, planted her feet on the tiles, put on her glasses, took an immaculate handkerchief from her belt, touched her pale lips with it, and cleared her throat. Jamey opened his eyes once and closed them again. He did not like to look at Ethel; if he looked at her her voice seemed even drier and more nasal, but he noticed in that one glance that, as usual, she had set her feet down a good eight inches apart. (Jamey believed that any woman who sat with her feet that way, except at the point of a gun, except to save her life, was hopeless as a woman, which did not depreciate her value as a secretary.) “Very well, then, my dear. Begin.”

When Ethel finished reading, Jamey said, “And the writer of this extraordinary missive tramped all the way from New York City to see Jamey?”

“So he told Joseph Reas. So he
said
.” She emphasized the last word, testing Jamey's notorious conceit of himself.

“
Said?
My dear girl, my dear Ethel, has familiarity bred contempt? Has being my secretary for ten years blinded you to my glory? Of course it is conceivable that the young man would come all that way merely to see me. It is not only conceivable; it is sensible.”

“Other people have come to Charleston to see you, Jamey, but when they get to the plantation and Joseph Reas tells them you don't see anyone, they go away. Why doesn't this one go away, Jamey?”

The bare, stringy leg wagged again. “Because this one is not just any young man, dear girl. Kindly read me that—er—paean of praise again.” He pointed his finger to the thick letter she held in her lap.

“Read it all though? Do you mean me to start from the beginning? Where he says you have been his master?” She glanced at a page. “‘It was you who made me love books. You made me want to be a writer.' Do you want me to read where he says why he has given up Proust, James, James Joyce for you?” Her eyes skipped some lines. “Where he says he is twenty-five years old?”

“Dear God,” Jamey said, “dear, dear God! Is there such an age, Ethel? Is there, really?”

Granted Jamey was seventy-eight, but Ethel was thirty-one. It was only six years since she had been twenty-five and Lemoyne Allen had married her, so presumably a desirable enough twenty-five. Ethel blushed the high angry blush of a pale blond, and her hand, holding the letter, trembled. “He then goes into all that appreciation of your work, Jamey. Is that what you want to hear?”

“You are thinking, Ethel, that were it possible for a writer to have been sufficiently praised for him to become bored with it, I am that writer.” He chuckled. “And I am that writer, but this is not mere applause. Seriously, dear girl, seriously, were this mere plaudit, I would not listen to it.” He waved his wizened arm. “More than once, that is. This is quite different; go on and read.”

Ethel felt, soon after she started reading, that Jamey's eyes had opened again, that he was staring at her. She heard a rustle and knew that he, who could lie as immobile in the sun as an old turtle, had stirred. She raised her eyes from the letter and found that Jamey had thrust himself up and was leaning on his elbows, which was an almost inconceivable exertion for him. Allowing Jamey to see her astonishment, for, with Jamey sitting up she did not dare do what she must do, shamed him into falling back in the chaise again, into closing his eyes again. Then she turned two pages instead of one, then she made as graceful as possible a transition over the part of the letter she did not read him. Finishing, she folded the pages hurriedly, running her fingers up and down along the crease, waiting, knowing that he would not ask to read it himself, but terrified that this time he might, that the famous Vaughn percipience would cause him to break his invariable rule.

But Jamey only said, “Fetch me my cigarettes, Ethel. He has hit it, hasn't he, again and again, the nail on the head, again and again, hasn't he?”

“Hasn't he!” She could have screamed in relief, in triumph, but she walked across the room to the huge desk as quietly as her excitement permitted, to lift the white jade box, took it, and, because of her nervousness, was halfway back across the room again before she remembered the lighter. Ethel tried to get the lighter without Jamey noticing her forgetfulness; he disliked waste movement and preferred anyone serving him to be completely efficient, like an automaton.

He noticed. “Ethel, dear girl!”

She could use this, this could help her with the next step. “I am upset, Jamey. I'm—as a matter of fact, I'm frightened by this letter.” The big part of Jamey was reputation; this was only a dried husk, an almost inert remainder.

“Frightened?”

“Frightened, because there's something uncanny, because he has such uncanny insight into your work, Jamey, that, well, it isn't normal.” She watched him closely.

“And because it isn't
normal
—my dear girl!” He giggled.

She thought: Joke, go on, joke, and held the jade box toward him while he chose a cigarette, inserting it into the gold holder from the jade box, lying back while she, bending over him with the lighter, whiffed the perfume he always used. “I'm serious about being frightened.” It was safe to reiterate, perhaps safer.

Jamey took a drag and watched the smoke as it curled out of his narrow nostrils. “You feel it is uncanny because he has hit it every time? Because what he says of each of my books and stories is precisely what I wanted said of each of them, what he received from each is precisely what I wanted to give?”

“Yes, Jamey, and—
The Red Wig
—remember, Jamey, you told me that if you hadn't had that one paragraph——How could he know about that, Jamey?”

Now his eyes stayed open. He smoked his cigarette more quickly than was his habit, neglecting to watch the smoke curl, forgetting to draw in the fragrance of the burning tobacco that, as a connoisseur of sensation, he conceived to be part of the pleasure, only omitted by dolts. He said quietly, “Not uncanny, Ethel, not uncanny at all. Each writer has his spiritual father in an older writer. From a literary point of view, the same blood flows through both their veins; the eye, the ear, the brain, all their senses are kin. What is material for the father writer is the optimum food for the younger.