The wedding was in September, and because it took place in Europe and because it was cursorily announced and precipitately arranged, the American newspapers had a field day with it: SECRET M"CORMICK NUPTIALS; SOCIALITE WEDS M"CORMICK HEIR IN SWISS RETREAT; M"CORMICK-DEXTER WEDDING SHROUDED IN SECRECY. Actually, there were two ceremonies-a civil ceremony before a magistrate in Geneva and a private celebration at Prangins presided over by a French cleric of indeterminate affiliation whom Nettie suspected of being a Unitarian or even a Universalist. She"d booked pa.s.sage as soon as Stanley had wired her that a date had been set, and she campaigned from the beginning for a church wedding there in the very birthplace of Presbyterianism-anything else would have been sacrilege, anything else would have cut her to the quick, torn her heart out and trampled on it-but it was Katherine"s wedding, Katherine"s chateau, and Katherine had hegemony over Stanley now, and no matter how fiercely Nettie fought, right up until the nasal clod of a Frenchman p.r.o.nounced them man and wife, she was doomed to failure. Stanley had made his choice, his leap, and it was like leaping from one forbidding precipice to another, and there was nothing she could do about it.
She made an uneasy peace with Josephine, who at least conducted herself like a lady and showed a remarkable degree of taste in the charm of the statuary and gardens at Prangins, but Nettie would never forgive her daughter, the scientist, the unholy little snit who"d stolen away her last and youngest, and even as the Frenchman was intoning, "Je vous declare maintenant mari et femme," she stood behind Stanley hissing, "G.o.dless, G.o.dless." And thank the Lord she"d brought Cyrus Jr. along to sustain her or she might have fainted dead away right there (neither Anita nor Harold would dignify the proceedings with their presence, and that was what it amounted to, though Anita had her child to look after and in Harold"s case, well, someone had to stay behind and keep an eye on the business). She did cry though, as mothers are wont to do on such occasions, but her tears were of an entirely different order from Josephine"s, who whimpered like a deprived three-year-old throughout the course of both ceremonies, if you could call them that-no, her tears were tears of rage and hate. If she could have struck Katherine dead right where she stood in her Gaston gown with its pearls and lace and the ridiculous puffed pancake of a hat she wore high up off the crown of her head so that she was nearly as tall as Stanley when you added it all up, heels, hat, chignon and veil, she would have, so help her G.o.d, she would have.
And how did the bride feel? For her part, Katherine was satisfied. Or more than satisfied-she was ebullient, triumphant, the battle over and the citadel taken, and she was gracious in victory. And in love too, having leapt the same chasm as Stanley, and there was no more anxiety, no more fear of the free fall and crash: he was her husband and she was his wife. She was content. Without reservations. As sure as she"d ever been of anything in her life. And what had made it all right and chased away her last remaining doubts was Stanley himself, prostrate before her on that early summer morning outside the chateau gates.
He was so contrite and pitiable, pale as a corpse, two weeks" worth of sleepless nights staring out of his eyes, every fiber of him yearning for her. He couldn"t defend himself or explain how he"d gotten there or why or what his presence portended for them both-he was overwhelmed by his feelings, that was it, as simple as that. He loved her. He couldn"t live without her. And she didn"t have to hear him say it or read it in a perfumed letter because she could see it in his eyes and his face and the way he held himself in a kind of hopeless and penitential despair : she"d warned him not to come and he"d disobeyed her. That melted her, that melted her right there, and she brought him in and fed him bonbons and madeleines and she showed him round the place, all twenty rooms, riding up off the b.a.l.l.s of her feet as if she were lighter than air and barely able to keep herself tethered, and then they were out on the lake and rowing, and she knew there was nothing more she needed in all the world than to have Stanley at her side.
Yes, and now they were married, and there wasn"t anything anybody could do about it, not Nettie or her odious little rat of a lawyer-Foville or Favril or whatever his name was-or the walking broomstick that was Cyrus, so stiff and formal and tripping over his boarding school manners, as tactless as a shoe-shine boy. But what did that matter to her? She hadn"t married the McCormick family, she"d married Stanley, and now the rest of her life was about to begin. She waited, breathless, a little flushed with the champagne she"d drunk, while the party broke up and her mother ushered the guests out into the reception hall and Stanley stood grinning and pale beside her. All the guests were going into Geneva for the night, and Josephine too-"I want you to have the place to yourself, sweet," she"d said, "just you and Stanley and the servants"-and in the morning they"d embark on their honeymoon, first to Paris for a month, to shop and stroll through the galleries, to visit Cartier & Fils and Tervisier & Dautant, and it would be one grand party, even if Nettie insisted on coming along-and Josephine. And she laughed to herself, a private trilling little chime of a bride"s laugh, wondering if two mothers on one honeymoon would somehow manage to cancel each other out.
She took Stanley"s hand in hers as the guests-there were only fifty or so, the most intimate group-began to make their exit. It was eight-thirty P.M. on September 15, 1904, and the day hung in tatters over the lake while the hall rang with laughter and good wishes and the intoxication of all that had happened and all that was to come. Stanley"s fingers were entwined in hers. Her peignoir-ivory silk with a border of Belgian lace the color of vanilla ice cream, Stanley"s favorite-was laid out on the big canopied bed in the Bonaparte suite upstairs. "Good night," she said to one guest after another, "good night, and thank you so much," while Stanley stood erect beside her, his right arm extended, shaking hands, grinning like a child, a lover, a Hindu ecstatic, his every word measured and apportioned and the current of antic.i.p.ation almost sizzling in his fingertips. She could feel it. She could.
And then there was the whole adventure of going to bed, the dismissal of the servants, the separate dressing rooms and baths, the shy smiles, the endearments, the bed itself. Katherine took her time, brushing out her hair, sick with joy, a twenty-nine-year-old virgin at the moment of release. She rubbed lotion into her face and hands, dabbed perfume behind her ears, and when she laid her dressing gown beside the wedding dress on the loveseat and stepped out of her undergarments, she felt a thrill go through her that was like nothing she"d ever experienced, a chill and a fever at the same time, the blood exploding in her veins like gunpowder. And then the nightgown. She lifted her arms, short of breath all of a sudden, and let the silk run down her like water. Twenty minutes had pa.s.sed since she"d squeezed Stanley"s arm and pecked a kiss to his cheek at the door to his dressing room. The hour was at hand.
She slipped into the bedroom on naked feet, the warm sheath of silk gathering at her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and hips and flowing gently across her abdomen. Two candles were burning ceremonially on either side of the bed-her mother"s idea-and there were flowers everywhere, a whole jungle of them, the air thick as wax with their scent. She could hardly breathe for excitement, and was that Stanley? There, beneath the covers-that shadow on the bed? No, it wasn"t, and her fingers told her what her eyes hadn"t been able to: the bed was empty. The room was empty. And Stanley"s door was shut. "Stanley?" she called, and when she got no answer she tried again, a little louder this time, and she realized she could scream at the top of her lungs if she wanted to and there was n.o.body to hear her, not even the servants. That made her feel strange. It made her feel bold, randy, made her feel like a wife. "Stanley?
Not a sound.
She tried the handle of his door: it was locked. She tapped at the door and called again. "Stanley?"
This time, from deep in the room beyond, there came a m.u.f.fled reply, a grunt of acknowledgment so strained and distant it might have been coming from Bonaparte"s secret tunnel in the bowels of the house. "I"m ready," she said, her lips pressed to the door. "I"m ready foryou."
Another grunt, nearer this time, and the sounds of movement, followed by a profound and brooding silence. And what was the matter? It took her a moment, and then a smile came to her lips. He was shy, that was all, shy as a maiden, and wasn"t that sweet? She didn"t want a Butler Ames or a Casaubon to initiate her into the pleasures of married life, she wanted this, she wanted Stanley, a neophyte like herself who would go slowly and allow her to discover the delights of Eros in mutual exploration, in partnership, in marriage, and no cast of lovers and wh.o.r.es and l.u.s.ty widows looking over her shoulder. All right. She would give him time. "I"ll be waiting for you in bed," she whispered. "Should I put out the candles"?"
And now his voice, right there, on the other side of the door: "No, it"s-yes, yes, do that and I"ll be-I"ll be just a minute, some things I have to, yes, of course-"
She drifted back to the bed, her respiration easing from a gallop to a canter, and leaned forward to cup her hand behind first one candle and then the other, puffing darkness into the room. The sheets welcomed her, the night gentle, stars framed in the window that looked out over the lake, and she"d pulled open the curtains for that at least, sidereal light, compa.s.s points to steer by. She fanned out her hair on the pillow and lay there on her back, waiting. What did she think of? Everything. Everything that had happened to her in her entire life, and she saw every face, every incident, heard every word replayed, and the stars shifted, and still Stanley"s door remained closed. How much time had pa.s.sed? Had she fallen asleep? She got out of bed, the carpet a continent beneath her feet and now the cold stone sea of the floor, and she was at the door again and no whisper from her lips this time, nothing, not a word. The handle turned with a click under the pressure of her fingers and she swung open the door.
Stanley"s face, pale as the moon, stared up at her in alarm from the secretary in the far corner of the room. He was seated before it in a stiff-backed chair, hunched over the leaf on his elbows amid a confusion of papers, envelopes, pens and pencils. He didn"t attempt a smile.
"Stanley, what in the world are you doing?" she said in a kind of amazement that verged on stupefaction, and why did she feel so naked and vulnerable suddenly, the negligee clinging to her in all the wrong places and her husband"s startled eyes just beginning to grapple with the image of her? She noticed the clock then, up on the mantelpiece, an ancient block of carved wood and Swiss works that marked the hour with a dull rasp instead of a chime. She was further amazed. "It"s nearly four in the morning," she said, and there was exasperation in her tone, wifely impatience, disbelief, shock even.
"I, well," he began, and she saw that he was still in his tuxedo and tails, the top hat sprawled casually on the desk beside him, "-you know, work, correspondence, that sort of thing. I am still, well, comptroller comptroller of the Harvester Company, though you"d never think it, and I-well, and there"re the thank-you notes, because so many people have-and Harold, I needed to write Harold and tell him about the day, about us, I mean." of the Harvester Company, though you"d never think it, and I-well, and there"re the thank-you notes, because so many people have-and Harold, I needed to write Harold and tell him about the day, about us, I mean."
She was dumbstruck. "But Stanley, darling, this is our wedding night...."
The light of the lamp, which he"d propped up on the near corner of the desk, split his face in two. He turned away from her to scribble something on the sheet of paper before him and he was stiff and bristling, the pen gouging at the paper till the nib gave way and he reached irritably for another. It took her a moment to realize he wasn"t going to respond.
"Darling, Stanley," she said, "can"t it wait? At least till morning?" And she crossed the room to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. He made no movement, not even a twitch, but kept on writing till he thought to shield the paper with his hand. "Stanley, come on now, be reasonable," she said, her voice soft and murmurous, and she ruffled the hair at the back of his neck.
He turned his face to her now, both hands nested over the paper on the desk so that she couldn"t see what he was writing, and what was this-secrets? Secrets on their wedding night? "I, I-" he began and trailed off. He seemed half asleep, drugged, mesmerized.
She let her hand roam over his shoulders. "Come on," she murmured, "it"s time to come to bed. With me. With me, Stanley."
"Yes," he said, staring up at her out of a fixed and wary eye, "yes-I-I know that, and I want to, I do, but you see, if you just give me a minute, that"s all I need, a minute more, just to finish up, I"ll, well, that is-"
What could she say? She was stunned and hurt. This was her wedding night, this was what she"d been looking forward to all her life, wasn"t it? What was wrong? Was it her? Was he rejecting her? Having second thoughts? She"d known he was shy, certainly, and that was one of the traits that endeared him to her, but this went beyond the bounds of any modesty or reticence she could possibly conceive of-he hadn"t even undressed yet. It was as if he had no intention of it, as if this night, of all nights in their lives, wasn"t consecrated, as if she hadn"t been waiting for him in the next room through all the lingering unfathomable hours. And then it came to her in a slow seep of understanding as she stood there rubbing his clenched shoulders and he averted his face and screened the letter from her: he was afraid of her. Afraid of his own wife. Afraid of the sheets, the bed, the complicated mechanics of love. He was suffering, she could see that, suffering for love of her, and it softened her.
"All right," she said finally, bending forward to brush the crown of his head with a kiss, wondering what to say, how to phrase it, how far she dared go, "but I don"t see how you can be thinking of business and correspondence at a time like this."
He wouldn"t look at her. She felt him stiffen under the touch of her hand where it lingered on his shoulder.
"All right," she sighed, "if you must, if your business means that much to you, but promise me you"ll come to bed in a minute, won"t you? Just a minute?" She brought her face close to his, the light of the lamp harsh and radiant, but he turned his head away and delivered his extorted promise to the tabletop.
"Yes," he said. "I promise."
[image]
In the morning she changed the bed herself, before the chambermaid had a chance to poke her nose in the door-no b.l.o.o.d.y sheets to display here, no flag of virginity, not even the good clean wholesome impress of two bodies lying entwined as one. She bundled up the sheets and stuffed them into the fireplace atop a pyre of pine kindling and split oak, where they made a quick and furious blaze before settling into ropy clots of ash. Stanley had fallen asleep at the desk and he was sleeping still when she awoke at eight to a heavy fuliginous light that spread like a stain over the lake until the sky was as dark as it had been just before dawn, when she"d first awakened. By nine, it was raining.
Katherine lay there prostrate on the stripped mattress, gazing out through the bed curtains at the water lashing the windows, afraid to move. She was hungry, famished-she"d hardly eaten a thing the day before for sheer excitement-but she was also afraid to ring for breakfast because then everybody would know, all servants notorious for their gossip and none more so than the frenchified Swiss, who always moved about the place as if they were on loan from an empress and missed absolutely nothing. But what to do? Her mother would arrive soon enough, every possible question in her eyes, and then Stanley"s mother would follow, just in time for a light luncheon before the whole rampant entourage entrained for Paris and the Elysee Palace Hotel.
Finally, as the clock in the next room struck ten with the faintest repeated rasp, she tiptoed to the door and peered in. Stanley was asleep still, head down, elbows splayed, a basket full of crumpled paper at his feet. He was snoring, a wheeze and stertor that animated the papers scattered round him, and she realized she hadn"t heard the sound of a man snoring since her father died-he used to fall asleep in the library after dinner, the newspaper slipping from his lap, a cup of hot malted milk cooling on the table beside him. She found the scene oddly touching, Stanley snoring there at the open secretary, his cheek pressed to the leaf while his lips fluttered and the long lashes of his eyelids meshed like a doll"s, but she had to wake him all the same-it wouldn"t do for the servants to find him like this.
She thought of shaking him and calling his name in a protracted whisper-"Stanley, Stanley, wake up"-as she expected she would on ten thousand mornings to come, but when she was actually in the room, actually approaching his splayed and sleeping form, she couldn"t bring herself to do it. And why not? Because he would be embarra.s.sed, mortified, caught in a lie, and she didn"t want to see the look on his face, the pain and bewilderment in his eyes and the shame-she didn"t want to be the one to remind him of the futile negligee and the lonely bed. So she took the easy way out-she retreated to the door and slammed it three times in succession before darting out of the bedroom, into the hall, and down the stairs to breakfast.
Eyebrows were raised. The servants crept around the halls like undertakers, Madame Fleury choking on her own suspended breath, her eyes oozing and doleful. And where, they wondered, was the master of the house, the king and patriarch and deflowerer of virgins? Sleeping late. He wasn"t to be disturbed. And of course this revelation was in itself cause for eyebrows to be raised still further. Katherine ignored them. She ordered breakfast, watched the rain, and ate, one small bite at a time.
Stanley appeared at noon, looking confused. He"d bathed and changed into a charcoal gray suit with a stiff formal collar and tie. Katherine, already dressed in the outfit she would wear to Paris on the train, was in the parlor, seated at the window with a book she was pretending to read. "Ah, well," Stanley said, poking his head in the door like a child playing a prank, "so there you, well, are. I just, well-"and then he was in the room, tall and solemn, his shoulders thrown back and something-a neatly folded slip of paper-making its way from one hand to the other and back again. He rocked on his heels. Smacked his lips. Opened his mouth to say something, but couldn"t quite seem to close it around the words he wanted.
"Good morning," Katherine said. "Or should I say, "Good afternoon"?"
He didn"t seem to know how to respond. He merely stood there, just inside the door, watching her out of hooded eyes.
"Did you sleep well?" She didn"t want to be acerbic, didn"t want to provoke him, but she couldn"t seen to help herself. She was angry. She was. And humiliated too.
"I-well-I, I"m sorry, I, you know-work ... and then, before I knew it-"and he threw his hands in the air in a gesture of helplessness, the neatly folded slip of paper going along for the ride.
Katherine felt the blood rush to her face. He was just standing there like a block of wood, like an oaf, his hands dangling, a fleck of shaving cream stuck to the underside of his chin. "Well?" she demanded. "Don"t I deserve a kiss?"-and she wanted to add, "at least," but held back.
Suddenly he was in motion, striding across the great cavernous stone room with its faded tapestries and the wall of long narrow windows giving onto the gray void of the lake, and he didn"t look tender, not at all-he looked determined, dutiful, martial almost. He bent to her stiffly as she raised her chin and compressed her lips, and stiffly, he kissed her-on the cheek, no less. She rose from the chair to take him in her arms, but he backed off a step, every mortal ounce of him working and twitching, and what was this? He was thrusting the paper at her, a crisply folded sheet of stationery with the McCormick monogram embossed in the corner.
"Katherine," he said, "I wanted-last night, I-here, forcing the paper into her hand, his smile high and tight, feasting on her with his eyes. "Go ahead," he said. "Open it. Read it."
She unfolded the paper and held it up to the light, standing there beside him on the morning after her wedding night with the rain beating at the windows and the servants lurking in the halls. It was a will. Four lines, signed and dated, and nothing more.
I, Stanley Robert McCormick, being of sound mind and body, do hereby consign all my monies, a.s.sets and real property, in toto, to my wife, Katherine Dexter McCormick, in the event of my death.
She didn"t know what to say. It was so unexpected, so odd-and so morbid too. Was this what he"d been writing? Was this what he"d hidden from her the night before? "Stanley," she murmured, and she couldn"t seem to find her voice, "you didn"t have to do this-there"s plenty of time to think of such things, years and years..."
He was beaming, all his teeth on display and his eyes lit like hundred-watt bulbs. "It"s a surprise," he said. "That"s what I-last night-it wasn"t business, not all of it, you see, because-because I was, well, I was thinking of you-"
And now she didn"t have to say anything, and neither did he. She wrapped her arms around him, pressed herself to him, one flesh, and lifted her face to his and found his lips. And they were like that, in that very pose, the first real kiss of their married life and every sentimental emotion charging through them, through them both, when Katherine"s mother swept in the door, all feathers and perfume and brisk commanding energy, and Stanley"s mother right behind her. "And will you look at this," Josephine crowed, "look at the lovebirds!"
PART III.
Dr. Kempf"s Time
BENIGN STUPORS.
O"Kane was sprawled on a circular patch of lawn in the middle of the daphne garden, along with Mart and Mr. McCormick, and all three of them were lathered in sweat and breathing hard. Mr. McCormick had been especially frisky on his walk that morning, leading them on a chase from one end of the grounds to the other, elbows pumping and nostrils flared, his eyes fixed on some invisible lure in the distance. Up they went, all the way to the top of the estate with its inhuman rise in elevation and vertiginous views of the Channel, and then they turned round and charged back down again, Mr. McCormick leading the way with his lunatic strides, feinting this way and that, till they"d circled the house three times and finally come to rest here, among the daphnes. Mart was lying p.r.o.ne on a stone bench near the fountain, inanimate but for his tortured breathing, and Mr. McCormick himself was stretched out on the lawn and staring up into the granular sky, his jacket balled up beneath his head to serve as a pillow. It was absolutely still, not a breeze, not a sound. The sun all but crushed them with its weight.
"A shame about Hoch," O"Kane said after a while, just to say something.
Mart grunted. Mr. McCormick stared up into the sky.
"I liked him, you know what I mean, Mart? He wasn"t so excitable as Hamilton or Brush, if that"s the word I"m looking for. And Mr. McCormick really came to like him too, didn"t you, Mr. McCormick?"
O"Kane hadn"t expected a response-he and Mart spent half their lives talking right through their employer and benefactor-but Mr. McCormick surprised him. He shifted his head to get a closer look at O"Kane, his eyes shrinking into focus. "Dr. Hoch?" he echoed, his voice high-pitched and unstable. "Wh-what happened to him?"
"You remember, Mr. McCormick-it was just yesterday, yesterday morning. Dr. Brush gave us the news."
There was a pause. A reflective look stole over Mr. McCormick"s features. After a while he said, "No, I don"t remember."
"Sure you do. You were very upset at the time-and I don"t blame you. All of us were upset."
Dr. Brush had returned from the War a month ago, in August, just in time to take the baton from Hoch, who was fading fast. If anything, the rigors of the Western Front had left the good doctor fatter and heartier than ever, and with a raft of plat.i.tudes and a whole shipload of for-the-main-and-simple-reasons he"d explained to Mr. McCormick that Dr. Hoch had pa.s.sed on early that morning of congestive heart failure-a weakness that ran in his family. But Mr. McCormick shouldn"t feel too badly, he said, because Dr. Hoch was an elderly man who"d lived a full and rich life and made innumerable contributions to the field of psychiatry, including the ma.n.u.script of a new book-Benign Stupors-which he"d been able to complete before his heart gave out.
Mr. McCormick was sitting over his breakfast at the time, fastidiously dissecting two fried eggs and a thick pink slab of ham with a soup spoon, the only implement available to him. "How elderly?" he asked without looking up.
"Hm? What?" The question had caught Brush by surprise.
"Dr. Hoch," Mr. McCormick said in the small probing voice of the rhetorician, "how-how elderly was he?"
Brush produced a stub of cigar from somewhere and jammed it in his mouth. "Hoch?" he repeated. "Oh, I don"t know-in his sixties, anyhow."
"Fifty-one," Mr. McCormick corrected, still without looking up. "And do you know how old I am, Dr. Brush?" He didn"t wait for an answer. "I"ll be forty-five in November. Am I an elderly man too?"
"Why, of course not, Mr. McCormick-Stanley," Brush boomed, all his flesh in motion as he shimmied round the room on his too-small feet, "you"re a young man still, in the flush of health and vigor, for the main and simple-"
Mr. McCormick had waited until the breakfast dishes had been cleared and he"d got dressed and made his way to the theater building before he gave vent to his feelings on the subject. In a roaring stentorian voice that drowned out the hypnotic tick-tick-tick tick-tick-tick of Roscoe"s projector and nullified the antics of Charlie Chaplin and Marie Dressler, he announced: "I don"t want to die! of Roscoe"s projector and nullified the antics of Charlie Chaplin and Marie Dressler, he announced: "I don"t want to die!
Brush"s voice leapt out of the darkness: "You"re not going to die, Mr. McCormick."
"I am !"
There was movement now, O"Kane and Mart positioning themselves, Brush rising mountainously from his folding seat in a swirl of shadow. Up on the screen, Charlie Chaplin spun round and booted a policeman in the rear, and O"Kane laughed aloud despite himself. "Now, now," Brush was saying, looming over the slouched form of their employer, "you"re a healthy mean, Mr. McCormick, in the peak of health, and you know it. Why, you"ve got the best of everything here, the most salubrious possible environment- Mr. McCormick"s voice, pinched thin as wire: "He"s a stinking rotting corpse, with-with things coming out of his eyes, because that"s-that"s the part they eat first, the eyes, and you know know it!" it!"
"I know no such thing, for the main and simple reason that that is just too morbid a thought for me to hold." Brush was waving his arms now in the flickering light, the lower half of the Little Tramp"s face appearing fitfully on his shoulder as if in some ghostly manifestation. "Think of him in heaven, in the arms of G.o.d-"
"G.o.d"s a fraud," Mr. McCormick spat, wrenching his neck angrily round. "And so are you."
And then there was the inevitable roughhousing, the collapse of the chairs, the curses, shouts and whimpers, the fumbling for the light switch and Dr. Brush"s intimate presentation of his persuasive and salvatory flesh to the rec.u.mbent form of their employer and benefactor.
Understandably, O"Kane didn"t want to push the subject now-he was burned right down to the wick after that footrace round the property and up that d.a.m.ned hill, and he"d had enough exercise for the day, thank you. "Well, anyway, at least we"ve got Dr. Brush back," he said, lamely. "And he"s all right. I guess."
Mr. McCormick didn"t seem to have an opinion on the subject. He just stared up into the sky as if he might find Dr. Hoch up there somewhere, seated on the edge of a cloud. And Mart-Mart was no help. His arms dangled over the sides of the bench and his breathing slowed till he began to snore. O"Kane lay there a while, hands cradling his head, enjoying the silence and the glory of the day, until he began thinking about the one thing that sustained him lately-booze, or more specifically, the pint bottle of bourbon whiskey he"d sequestered in the reservoir of Mr. McCormick"s toilet. It was past noon and there was no reason they should be lying in the gra.s.s when they could be inside making themselves presentable for lunch-and other activities. He saw himself slipping into the bathroom as Mr. McCormick spooned up his meat loaf and gravy, saw the bottle all striped with water and felt the cork twist out of the neck of it and the swallowing reflex of his throat that was the nearest thing he had to an o.r.g.a.s.m lately, since he"d sworn off women, anyway. "Well, and so," he said with as much cheer as he could muster as he pushed his weary parched self up off the gra.s.s, "what do you say, gentlemen-time for lunch?"
And that would have been all right, because Mart woke with a start and Mr. McCormick found his legs and began mechanically brushing off his jacket preparatory to slipping it back on-if it weren"t for the gopher, that is. O"Kane didn"t even know what it was at first. A little thing, like a rat, only pale and yellowish almost to the color of a b.u.t.ter-nut squash, and it suddenly popped its head out of a hole in the ground and tore twice round the patch of lawn before vanishing down a second hole like water down a drain. Mr. McCormick was dumbstruck. At first. And then he got excited. "Did you see that?" he said. "Did you? Did you see it?" And by now he was down on his hands and knees, probing into the thing"s lair with his right hand and forcing his arm in up to the elbow. "What is it?" he kept saying.
"Beats me," O"Kane said with a shrug. "A weasel?"
Mart came over and stood there looking at the hole and Mr. McCormick ruining his cuffs and the sleeve of his jacket. "That"s no weasel," he said. "Are you nuts or something? A weasel"s long and skinny. "
"So what is it then?" O"Kane demanded. He didn"t really give a good G.o.dd.a.m.n one way or the other, but he hated for Mart to show him up.
Mart scratched his head. "A groundhog," he said, but he didn"t sound too sure of himself.
By this point, Mr. McCormick had got his whole arm in the burrow, right up to his shoulder and he was scooping out dirt with his bare hand. "It"s in there, I know it is," he said, and then he got to his feet and collapsed that portion of the burrow he"d already excavated, falling once again to his knees and thrusting his arm into the new opening. He looked up, perplexed. "It"s-It"s going for the daphnes," he said.
"Nothing to worry about, Mr. McCormick," O"Kane a.s.sured him, sensing an episode coming on, "I"ll get the head gardener to take care of it right after lunch. And say, speaking of lunch," pulling his watch out with a flourish, "if we hurry we"ll be just in time."
Mr. McCormick ignored him. He was digging furiously now, with both hands, crouched over the expanding burrow like a fox terrier. Already his nails were ruined and you could see the blood like a tattered ribbon moving beneath the scrim of filth on his right hand. Mr. McCormick was distracted. He was obsessed. He was being sick and pathological. O"Kane didn"t want any violence, not now, not today-all he wanted to do was go back to the house for lunch and a drink sneaked in the toilet-but he would have to intervene, and soon, he could see that. He signaled to Mart, but Mart wasn"t paying any attention-Mart was standing over Mr. McCormick"s shoulder and peering down into the excavation, saying, "I think it goes this way, yeah, that"s right, through the flowerbed and then maybe under those bushes over there-"
O"Kane took him by the arm. "Maybe Dr. Brush will know what it is," he said in a falsely hearty voice. "Mart, why don"t you go get Dr. Brush?" And then he tightened his grip and dropped his voice, adding, for Mart"s benefit only, "Right now. Right this minute. You understand me?"
When Mart returned ten minutes later with a wheezing, puffing and bl.u.s.tering Dr. Brush in tow, Mr. McCormick had already excavated a looping twenty-foot furrow through the daphne bed and back into the lawn, where he was working furiously with a stick he"d found beneath the oleander bushes (the very bushes O"Kane had been repeatedly warned to keep him away from, as their flowers, leaves and branches were all highly toxic). "Mr. McCormick," Brush bellowed, even as he was fighting to catch his breath, "what is this? You"re ruining the flower beds! And the beautiful lawn Mr. Stribling has worked so hard on."
Mr. McCormick never even glanced up. It was his estate and he could dig the whole place down to China if he wanted to. Its-its a-a-a groundhog," he said. "It lives here. Under the gra.s.s."
"Yes, yes," Brush said, bending over him now, "I have no doubt of that, but what"s it to you, Mr. McCormick, really? I"m sure the creature isn"t doing any harm, and if it is, well, we have the excellent Mr. Stribling and his professional gardeners to see to it. Now come on, come out of there and let"s get cleaned up and have some lunch. Doesn"t that sound like a good idea?"
"No," Mr. McCormick said, digging, and the dirt was flying furiously in the direction of the doctor so that Brush had to back up to avoid having his cuffs filled with it. "No. I want this, this thing. I want to k-kill it. It"s destroying the, the flowers, don"t you see?"
There was no use arguing with him, not when he was like this, and n.o.body really wanted to get down there in the dirt and restrain him, not after the free-for-all in the theater house yesterday, so Dr. Brush did the politic thing and sent Mart to fetch Stribling.
Stribling was a standoffish sort of fellow for a gardener-or landscape architect, as he liked to call himself-and on the few occasions O"Kane had run into him, usually while jogging from one end of the estate to the other behind Mr. McCormick"s bobbing and weaving form, the man had been brusque and uncommunicative. He was in touch with Katherine by post and while he did submit all major plans to her for approval, he pretty much had free rein to continue the work of his predecessor, a famous wop whose name O"Kane could never remember, and he always had his team of laborers, truck drivers and manure spreaders under the gun. If they weren"t shoveling silt out of the reservoir or constructing a water tower, they were building stone bridges over the creeks and repairing and extending the roads, not to mention clipping every leaf of every shrub like a horde of overzealous barbers. It took no more than five minutes and Stribling was there, another man in tow-a gaunt tall Irishman with a wandering eye-the kind of man O"Kane"s mother would have called a long drink of water. If O"Kane recalled correctly the man"s name was O"Hara, or maybe O"Mara-the day laborers came and went like the weather and there was no way to keep track of them, not unless they turned up at one of the saloons, that is. Both Stribling and the Irishman had shovels slung over their shoulders.
"Ah, there you are, Mr. Stribling," Brush hollered, "and I see you"ve brought one of your, uh, a.s.sociates along too, and all the better. You see, we have a problem, for the main and simple reason that some sort of groundhog has got under the lawn here and Mr. McCormick is very concerned about it, isn"t that right, Mr. McCormick?"
The dirt flew. Mr. McCormick said nothing.
Stribling and his man stepped up to examine the trench through the flower bed, the ravaged lawn, the uprooted oleanders. "It"s a gopher," Stribling said matter-of-factly, and he was so burned by the sun you would have thought he was a spaghetti twister himself. He laid a finger alongside his nose and gave Mr. McCormick a look. "We"ll get him, don"t you worry," he said. "But here, Mr. McCormick, you don"t have to do that now-a trap"s the thing, that"s what we need."
The Irishman, his nose peeling and his eye wandering, began to shove) dirt back into the hole, but Mr. McCormick would have none of it. "Step away from there," he said, glaring up at the man, and dug all the more furiously, every st.i.tch of clothing on him ruined beyond washing or repair. The knees of his trousers glistened with compacted mud, his collar was a sop, his tie a rag.
"It"s past one, Mr. McCormick," Brush remonstrated, "-you know you"ll miss lunch now if you don"t hurry, and we"ve got to allow time to clean up."
O"Kane put in his two cents then: "That"s right, Mr. McCormick. Lunch."