William F. Buckley Jr. (11 page)

Harriet was a total success, faithful to her father’s preachments. And having been born with so exuberant a good nature, she had a difficult time expending it all. She worried about herself hardly at all (what was there, after all, to worry about?), but worried most persistently about Caroline, and about Elsie; and, as a matter of fact, about many of her teachers. Oh yes, and she worried also about the president of Smith. He was overworked, she informed her friends, his office understaffed.

But the object of her concerns at the moment was Caroline Chafee. “Why?—Caroline, don’t just say you don’t
want
to go to West Point with Lucy, tell her
why
you don’t want to go to West Point with Lucy.”

Caroline smiled. Caroline smiled a great deal. It was sometimes the sign of understanding, sometimes of gratitude and deference, sometimes a way of closing off a subject she thought it appropriate to close or, in any case, a subject she wanted to close.

She liked Harriet, really did. It had taken her almost the whole of the first two years to get used to Harriet’s hectoring. But somewhere along the line it became evident that Harriet simply
cared
—cared very much, the way some people care if other people
remembered to brush their teeth that morning. Cared, in this case, very much (Caroline knew this) about her restricted social life. Caroline sighed, seeing no way out of it.

“Darling Harriet, I don’t like to repeat myself, but I have told you that I am very attracted to someone, and I don’t terribly enjoy myself when I am out with somebody else. Now, is that so unusual?”

Harriet took a deep puff from her cigarette, and then set it down as if to prepare to begin a lecture.

“It is very unusual, very mistaken, and
utterly
wrong, Caroline. We know of course that you are talking about Danny O’Hara. I have nothing against Danny, nothing at all. He is polite, he is handsome, his family is rich and distinguished, he graduated from Yale last spring and has gone to work in New York. Fine. When he was a senior at New Haven he came here what, once a month? And you went to New Haven on odd months. That means that even then, three quarters of the time you spent the weekend—well, alone. But now that he’s working in New York he comes only every five or six weeks.…”

Caroline had told Danny, at one of her last visits to Yale in the spring, just before his graduation, about Harriet’s preoccupation with her lonely weekends.

“What does Miss Harriet do on weekends?”

They were together that evening at the lounge of the Taft Hotel, had walked the short distance from Zeta Psi, Danny’s fraternity. It had been a crowded day. That morning, Caroline had taken the train to Springfield from Northampton and there caught the express, Hartford-New Haven. There was a milk punch party at the
Yale Daily News
, then lunch at Silliman, then in Danny’s car to the sybaritic crew race with Harvard on the Thames River. Caroline found herself quite carried away—more, actually, than Danny, whose cheers for the home crew she thought perfunctory. Then the cocktail party at Zeta Psi, followed by dinner and two rounds of bridge with Fred Zahn and Charlie Melhado who, some survivors of their game were convinced, were majoring in bridge. Their game was speedy, quiet
and ruthless. Danny was accustomed to losing to them but he enjoyed the sport, and the proximity to Caroline.

It did not matter that they were not engaged in conversation during the two hours. His closeness to her was what mattered; and then, during the bidding, he would look at her, the oval face framed by the light yellow hair, her hazy brown eyes looking down at her hand, then up—sometimes, even though she was looking directly across the table, she gave no sense of seeing him. She never lost the train of the conversation, never delayed needlessly in putting down a card or making her bid, but Danny felt that her quiet self-containment was a means of telling those about her that she was quite happy in the private garden in which she strolled, without any need of accompaniment. Danny found this enchanting, but never spoke of the phenomenon, not even to Henry. Surely, he thought, this fascinating faculty of Caroline’s must be obvious to everyone around her?

It was after eleven when they sat down at the lounge of the Taft. She ordered Coca-Cola, he a beer. She was at the end of one large leather couch, Danny sat in the armchair perpendicular, his right hand outstretched, his elbow resting on the arm of the couch. She stroked the palm of his hand.

“What does Harriet do on weekends? You know, Danny, I simply don’t know. I am sure she has every minute planned of every weekend from now until we graduate … she is that way. And I suppose one day she will say to herself, ‘Harriet, it is time you got married.’ She will then survey the field and notify the lucky winner. And believe me, Danny, he will be lucky to have Harriet.”

Danny’s shudder was intentionally exaggerated. Caroline noticed it and simply changed the subject. Danny acknowledged the maneuver and commented on it: “You are the least contentious person I have ever known.”

Caroline smiled, and replied, “You are
not
the least contentious person
I
have ever known.”

He gripped her hand.

And now his voice was slightly hoarse. She sensed what was coming and she was right. “Caroline, I can’t stand it any longer. I
have to have you. To love you, in my arms. You go up and let me follow in a few minutes, will you, darling?”

“No, Danny dear, I will not. You are my beautiful Danny boy and I do love you, I have told you that, but I am not—”

“—not going to
spoil
your beautiful Danny boy?” He sighed. The spell was quickly broken, his desire sublimated. He removed his hand. The ache of longing was still there, but instantly he recaptured control. He grinned broadly. “Oh dear, I guess I will have to go sleep with somebody else tonight, what a pity.”

She didn’t say anything, but put down her glass and got up. She looked about the large old-fashioned lobby with its two-dozen leather armchairs, the coffee tables with the day’s newspapers here and there, the unused, sleepy, slightly untidy old Negro porter sitting within conversational reach of the night clerk. “It’s time, Danny. Time to go to bed.”

“That exactly has been my point.”

Another of her smiles, but no comment. He walked with her to the elevator. They kissed and he said, “The usual?”

“The usual. I’ll walk over to Silliman after the eight o’clock mass.”

Danny waved his hand as the elevator doors closed. She blew him a chaste kiss.

Walking back to his college he realized suddenly that if there had been a cat house between the Taft Hotel and Silliman College, with hot and cold running raunchy girls, he would not now—not this very minute—stop to patronize it. After being with Caroline, there was no substitute for Caroline. But, lying in bed a half hour later, he reflected that his self-denial was not, really, all that natural. He was bewitched—that was the best he could make of it. It was a very nice feeling, but the odds were against its lasting forever. He called Sally Smithers in New York and made a date for Sunday night.

T
HEY WERE TAKING final exams and there was only one left to go—as it happened, the single course both Danny and Henry were enrolled in, third-year French. They were bone-weary from the studying done to prepare for the exams taken during the preceding ten days, and now Danny was especially, exuberantly restless. He would rather complain about tomorrow’s exam than prepare for it, he’d have conceded if asked. So he cranked up:

“You know Clavet’ll give us a long, tough passage to translate. Probably from his beloved Racine. But if it is Racine, for sure it won’t be anything we’ve ever laid eyes on before.” Danny rose from his desk and lightly tweaked his nose, in the manner of M. Clavet. His voice rose a half octave: “
Rien que vous avez déjà connu
 … Henry, I hope what I just said in exquisite French wasn’t too complicated for you to understand?”

Henry decided he’d retaliate massively, since his French was much more advanced than Danny’s, and so he replied in high-speed French words to the effect, “Obviously M. Clavet isn’t going to have us translate a passage we’re already familiar with, you—” He had a hard time coming up with French for “jerk.” He settled on “—
vous bête.
” And then added in English, “What would be the point of asking us to translate a passage we’ve already familiarized ourselves with?”

Danny leaned back in his swivel chair, closed his eyes and smiled. “You know what, Henry? You’re absolutely right. No point at all. I just felt like dumping on M. Clavet, and then you went and spoiled all my fun.”

Henry enjoyed Danny’s spontaneity. Danny was that way. He didn’t hide it when he was obviously guilty. It was easier to transform what was previously thought wrong to something freshly recognized as right.

“Screw,” Danny said. “Let’s go to George and Harry’s and have a beer. We can talk to each other in French, if you think that’s the only way to justify getting away from the goddamn memory work.” The memory work was a review of five thousand French words the students of M. Clavet were expected to have learned.

“Why not?” Henry said. “Did you know hamburger is established as perfect brain food?” Henry’s voice was very serious.

“No. As a matter of fact, I didn’t know that. When did the brain surgeons come through with that?”

“They haven’t yet. I am just anticipating them.”

Danny laughed. Anyway, Henry was all for forgetting the French for a while and having a beer. Or two. If Henry said okay, Danny reasoned, it had to be
okay.
If Henry had frowned on taking off a half hour, Danny would have left anyway. But he wouldn’t have enjoyed himself as much.

Henry poked his head out of the open window and looked down on the quadrangle, its dimensions clearly indited by the modest yellow lights under the succession of arcades. A lovely
sight. And Silliman was only a block or so from the hamburger and beer joint heavily patronized by students who lived in that area of the campus. “Still warm. Well, why not, June tenth it should be warm.”

“I wish your Lakeville lake were around the corner.”

“Yeah,” they were walking toward the eatery, “that would be nice.”

“Hey!” Danny stopped in his tracks. “I got an idea. Let’s get a couple of beers, pile into the car, and go to the beach at Savin Rock.”

Henry brightened. “What the hell. I mean,
pourquoi pas, Monsieur Daniel? Il faut nous amuser!
”

Twenty minutes later the car was parked. The headlights had detected no other cars along the half mile of sandy stretch by the beach that led to the amusement park at the end of the promontory.

“Monastic community,” Danny said, looking about at the empty parking lot. “No lovers.” He opened the second beer, handed it to Henry and walked toward the water’s edge. A few steps from the water he took off his shoes and khaki pants, stretching the pants out on the sand to sit down on them, beer in hand. Henry joined him. The moon was new, the movements of the seawater visible, but not incandescent. Danny swigged on his beer contemplatively. He was asking himself the question, Now? He answered it. “Why not?”

“Henry? You know something?”

Henry sensed what was coming. The accents, the formulation. An invitation to learning.… It had to mean that Danny was ready—finally—to talk about the one subject of common interest never touched on. “You want to talk about Caroline.”

Danny was surprised. “Well, yes. I want to marry her.”

“I’d have guessed so. And—” he very nearly betrayed an intimacy he had got from his sister, but he caught himself in time—“I suppose you have asked her?”

“Damnedest thing about your sister, Henry. You don’t have to formulate things. I mean, not most things. She understands everything. Often she knows what I’m thinking before I’m thinking
it. Like tonight, walking to George and Harry’s, she’d probably have said when we walked out of Silliman, ‘Danny, you’d like to go to the beach, wouldn’t you?’ … No. I haven’t asked her. But asking Caroline if she would marry me would feel a little like asking her if she, if she … intends to graduate from college.”

“You mean—”

“I mean she’d wonder what on earth alternative ever occurred to me. Or to her. She’d say something like, ‘What an odd question. Of course we’ll be married. The only question is when.’ ”

Henry was serious. “I know what you mean. She’s been that way always. I don’t need to tell you that Caroline is—”

“No. You don’t need to tell me. I know it. I guess what I’m saying, Henry, is that I hope you approve.”

Henry laughed now. “What does it matter? If, as you say, she expects to marry you, that leaves out any leverage I might have on the matter.”

“I want you to be happy about it.”

“I am, Danny. You know how I feel about you. I won’t even mention the most obvious debt I have to you. Well, sure, I will: If it weren’t for you I would probably be behind bars right now.”

“We agreed never—”

“Yeah, and up until now I’ve lived up to it. But it’s there, the dominant event in our relationship—in our friendship. In my life, come to think of it. And then we’ve done a lot together since then. Including a little—book-burning in Cannes.”

Henry did not see the expression on Danny’s face. Since boarding the
Continental
that same afternoon, Danny had never again mentioned Paul Hébert. Or whatever his name was; Henry wasn’t sure. “All I can say is that if Caroline loves you the way she obviously does, that fact would eliminate any reservation I had about you. Assuming I had any reservation about you. Though you know, Danny, you are a little … headstrong. Probably just your—our—high testosterone level, as twenty-five-year-olds. You probably know that. You should know that it’s visible to other people. Like me.”

Danny thought this was enough on the subject. He got up,
clapped Henry on the back, pulled off his polo shirt, dropped his shorts, and said, “I got you, Henry; now,
allons nager!
”

He ran toward the water and dived in, followed by Henry. They swam vigorously for fifteen minutes. At midnight they were back with their five thousand French words.