Establishment (38 page)

“Have you lost your mind?” Jean cried.

“It doesn't matter. The walls are white anyway.”

Sam, under Dan's guidance, began to smear an unpainted part of the wall while Jean and Eloise put out tea things on a bridge table. Barbara, somewhat awed, watched the proceedings in silence.

“Don't judge it the way it is now,” Jean said. “We have three gallery rooms right through the building, front to rear. The rear room has a skylight. The floor will be carpeted, pale tan, just a shade darker than cream. Spots to light the pictures. The office is off the middle room.”

“It's going to damn well be the classiest gallery west of the Rockies,” Dan said.

“More paint,” Sam said.

“We deal in only the Moderns,” Jean went on. “Nothing farther back than the Expressionists. They are going to look at Pollock, Rothko, Ajay, Klee, Calder, Kandinski, and Marin, and they are going to like them and appreciate them and buy them, and the Philistines will be vanquished.”

“Whatever that means,” Dan agreed.

“Will he eat oatmeal cookies?” Eloise asked.

“He loves them.”

“I see it, but I don't believe it,” Barbara said, removing the brush from Sam's hand and trying to wipe the paint off his face while he protested violently. “Only because we're going to have oatmeal cookies,” she explained to him. “Or would you rather paint? Paint or cookies?”

“Cookies,” Sam decided instantly.

“Takes after his grandfather,” Jean said. “What don't you believe, Bobby?”

“Dan Lavette painting walls. Jean Seldon in jeans—I'm not trying to pun—and work shirt. Who was it said, ‘There is no San Francisco society without Jean Seldon?'”

“But I'm not Jean Seldon. I have been Jean Lavette, Jean Whittier, and now we're giving Jean Lavette another try. It's a whole new ball game, as your old man would say. We're having more fun than any of us ever dreamed of having, and who knows, we may make some history.”

“But, mother, you can't sell those artists in San Francisco. You know that. Oh, they might buy a Georgia O'Keeffe, if it's a bona fide buffalo skull that they can recognize, but Calder and Klee? Never.”

“We shall educate them, shall we not, Eloise?”

“We'll try.”

“And how does it work? Are you all three partners?”

“Only the ladies,” Dan said. “I'm the janitor.”

“And what about your boat, daddy? And the days you and mother are going to spend sailing the bay?”

“That's not out. I'm doing a whole new set of plans. I'm not sure I want a yawl. I'm not completely sold on it, so now I'm designing a cutter. Don't you worry. Another year, and Sam'll be able to sail with me. Between him and Freddie, I have me a crew. What about it, Eloise, will you let me teach Freddie how to sail a boat?”

“Why not? He's seven now. And Joshua's a year old. You won't exclude Josh because he's not your grandson?” she asked.

“Absolutely not.”

“Is he a year old?” Barbara asked in surprise. “What happens to us?”

“A great deal happened to you,” Eloise said. “You know, he was born so soon after Bernie died.”

Barbara closed her eyes and shook her head.

“What is it, Bobby dear?” Jean asked her. “Are you all right?”

“Perfectly all right. It's just that people are strange. I'm strange. Harvey Baxter called me today to tell me that the Appellate Division had turned down our appeal and supported Judge Meadows—and do you know, I had forgotten all about it.”

***

“By those who know it exists,” Lucy told her husband, “the club is called the establishment. That's a British term.”

“I know,” Tom said somewhat petulantly. “I have been there, you know.” He resented Lucy when she became too didactic, yet he always listened and he was constantly amazed at the things she picked up, the people she knew.

They were having breakfast in the solarium of the old Sommers mansion on Pacific Heights. Alvin Sommers had died of a stroke three months before, leaving his home and everything else he owned to Lucy, and she and Tom had moved into the house a few weeks later. It was a magnificent graystone structure of eighteen rooms, one of the first great homes to have been built on Pacific Heights and only four lots from John Whittier's house. That did not perturb Tom. Whittier had cancer and was dying in the hospital. Tom did not desire him dead, but at the same time he recognized that this way he would be spared the unpleasantness that could develop from having him as a neighbor.

They no longer built houses with solariums, and Tom was not too comfortable with an indoor jungle, but Lucy would not touch it. It had always been their breakfast room and tea room, and since it meant so much to her, Tom was content to let it be. His old home had been rented out. He could have pressed Lucy to live there, but in all truth he preferred the archaic grandeur of the Sommers place.

“Tom, I'm not trying to be superior,” Lucy said gently. “I would never dream of marrying a man who was my inferior in any way, and it's time you accepted that. It's just that the English use of the term fascinates me. They accept the fact that a small group of men exercise control, that it always has been that way and that it will continue to be that way. We delude ourselves into thinking otherwise.”

“Some of us do and some of us don't,” Tom said.

“Of course,” Lucy went on, “they do not refer to themselves as the establishment. They would consider it pompous and gauche, and these men are neither pompous nor gauche. They are very practical, down-to-earth people.”

“Go through it again,” Tom said, his eyes half closed. He remembered the names only too well, but a request like that pleased Lucy. Tom was not conscious of the mother-and-child game they played, yet he fell into it partly out of his own need and partly because of Lucy's response.

“Joseph Langtrey, First New York Trust.”

“He's the only Easterner. That's odd.”

“He keeps a place in Sonoma County. He has three thousand acres there. He raises grapes and horses.”

“I suppose their equivalent exists in the East,” Tom said. “Probably in Chicago too.”

“Not precisely the equivalent. All right, we have Mark Fowler, newspapers; Ira Cunningham, steel; Louis d'Solde—how would you describe him?”

“Submarines, tanks, chemicals—it goes a long way. I don't know how far.”

“Geoffrey Culpepper, very quiet. You know, there is almost nothing about him. I know he has a place in La Jolla, down near San Diego, but apparently no one knows where. Electronics, communications, that sort of thing. He's very big in television manufacture, Culpepper Electronics, but that's only the tip of the iceberg. Diodes, microwaves. A lot more that truthfully I don't understand. He also controls a string of radio stations and three television stations. Well, so much for our mystery man. The last of the group is Oscar McGinnis.”

“And all one has to say is oil, which just about sums it up. The question is, Lucy, where do we fit in? These are giants. We have a net worth in the neighborhood of three hundred million.”

“It's not too bad a neighborhood.”

“It's still very small potatoes. You say they call themselves the club?”

“Just that. The club. When Mark Fowler asked me to lunch with him, I had no idea what he wanted. He was an old friend of my father, and I thought it was simply a gesture. Actually, I had heard rumors of the group, people calling it the Bayside establishment. But no one really knew who they were. Fowler simply laid it all out for me. Oh, nothing earthshaking. Six important, influential men of affairs who meet once a month to discuss the country's economy and political direction. Of course, that's euphemistic. Men like these do not hold debating sessions or gossip to hear themselves talk. But he stressed that there is no formality, no minutes, no notes taken. He mentioned that he trusted my discretion almost in passing, but it sank home. In the same way, he suggested that you might like to join them at their next meeting, at Langtrey's place.”

“Why didn't he come to me directly?”

“I suppose that would have formalized it. I imagine they eschew anything that smacks of formality. I'm the daughter of an old friend. It could come off simply as an expression of interest. I mean, that's actually what Fowler said, ‘Tom Lavette, interesting young man. We'd like to chat with him.'”

“That's all?”

“Isn't it enough? I know it's a cliché to say that one doesn't see the forest for the trees, but the Seldons and the Sommers too have been fussing with the trees for a hundred years now. First there was the bank, and then Dan Lavette's shipping line and his property and the airlines, and then the combination of both, and then the taking over of the Whittier interests, and now your father's fleet of tankers—and you keep yourself engrossed with each little bit of it, like someone putting together a jigsaw puzzle without knowing what the picture on the puzzle is. But the plain truth is that today we are a power on this coast. Giannini, Hearst, Crocker, Hughes—none of them has the diversity of influence that we can exercise. And it's been quiet. Except for that idiocy on your sister's part, we've kept our heads down, and I imagine the club likes the display of prudence and good taste.”

A week later, Tom drove out to Joseph Langtrey's sprawling adobe ranch house in Sonoma County. Tom had been born into a very wealthy family, had been educated at Groton and Princeton, and had spent time with wealthy relatives in Boston and in London, yet the manner of entertainment at Langtrey's ranch was subtly different from anything he had ever experienced. It was opulently simple. The servants were Chicanos, dressed in white, and they anticipated his every desire. The living room was a huge barn of a room—tile floor, beamed ceiling, great fireplace, overstuffed furniture. Langtrey, tall, slender, gray-haired, greeted him easily, as if they were old friends. He had met the short, stocky Fowler before. Cunningham was an undistinguished man, pince-nez, thin, sandy hair over a balding skull. Louis d'Solde wore a mustache, long saturnine face, impeccable clothes. McGinnis was huge, enormously fat, two-hundred-dollar cowboy boots under gray flannels; and as if in calculated contrast, the mysterious Culpepper was a small, elegant, scholarly looking man in his mid-forties, his voice soft and modulated against McGinnis' booming Texas explosiveness.

Dinner in a dining room with whitewashed walls, decorated only with two very large Remingtons, was simple and good.

The wine was explicitly native California vintage. No soup, a large, roasted joint, carved to choice from a silver cart, potatoes and vegetables, followed in the old-fashioned manner by a savory, and then pie and coffee and brandy. It was hardly the kind of dinner Tom would have served to important guests—or to unimportant guests, for that matter—but he recognized and appreciated the reverse snobbery that went into it. It was an evening for men. There were no women visible anywhere, nor was there any talk of women. The cigars passed around at the end of the meal were three brands of the best Havana. The conversation during dinner was knowledgeable and Catholic in breadth. Langtrey and, surprisingly, McGinnis had been to the opening of
Death of a Salesman
in New York. Langtrey had enjoyed it; McGinnis called it hogwash. There was a good deal of talk about Korea. D'Solde was quite certain that there would be civil war there within months and that the United States would be in it, as he put it, “lock, stock, and barrel.” Culpepper was worried about China, fearing that there was no way they could become involved in a Korean war without Chinese intervention. “You might sound out Truman on that,” he said to McGinnis.

The conversation moved from subject to subject, the easy talk of men who had access to people and places without limit, but there was no direct reference to Tom's presence or the reasons for it. They brought him into the conversation quite naturally, but during dinner it was simply conversation. They asked him questions about the redwood reserves, a subject on which he was well versed, but that too was simply conversation. It was not until they were once again in the living room, sitting in front of the fire with cigars and brandy, that Culpepper said to Tom, “We hear you've been seeing Drake?”

Tom nodded. “Yes, I have.”

“What do you think of him?” McGinnis asked.

Tom had the feeling that they would measure him by his answer, and he considered the question for a moment or two before he replied. “He's not profound, but he's cunning. He's almost demoniacally directed, and he's very ambitious. He's also possessed of the poor-boy syndrome. He worships money and wants it very badly.”

“What of his manner?” Langtrey asked.

“He can be very ingratiating.”

“Why did he let that charade with your sister go through?”

“It's the same poor-boy syndrome. He worships money, but the hostility goes with it.”

“That was before you met him?”

“Yes.”

“I imagine he's willing to let your sister purge herself,” Culpepper said, “but she won't if I read her right. I admire her. She has guts.”

It came as a surprise to Tom. He nodded slowly and waited.

“Do you trust him—Drake?” Fowler asked.

Tom shrugged. “Once he's sold what he has to sell, I don't see that he has much choice.”

McGinnis was studying Tom thoughtfully. McGinnis was a well-hidden man. There was more there, Tom decided, than one would surmise from the cowboy boots and the enormous girth.

“Could he win a big election?” McGinnis asked slowly.

“I think he could if he were properly coached and directed. He has a quality that appeals to people who don't think. Most people don't think. And he has no principles as far as I can make out—except power and money, if you think of them as principles.”