Her Infinite Variety (21 page)

T
ONY TYLER
had learned, more or less, to live with his multifold resentments. He had a way of dressing them up and marching them up and down the inner stage of his turbulent thoughts. This habit had been impressed upon him early in life, by watching his cool and rarely ruffled mother, in whose custody he had been largely reared, and noting that she was apt to get her way by not allowing her contempt for the world too visibly to erupt. Oh, she let it be suspected, all right! A faint smoke was discernible over the crater of her by no means extinct volcano. But her stately saunter past the respectful throng of her severely limited society put him in mind of a beautiful black and white skunk sporting over its sleek back a fine, bushy tail. Tony himself, however, lacking both her beauty and her stateliness, had had to make gestures to appease the world. His trouble was that he couldn't seem to hide what he was trying to do. People suspected a concealed hostility and wondered what it was based upon.

He had never been able to achieve in any activity a first position, or at least what he regarded as that. At school the slightness of his build had relegated him to only a second or third place in sports, and what one could only rate as the slightness of his intellect (despite a perfect memory, at least for snubs) had kept him in the second rank of scholarship. Finally, he had been mocked as a boy—oh, bitter memory!—for the slightness of his private parts, though these had later developed normally, and it might have been that which had long hampered him in social life and kept him, until college age, on the outer circle of even friendly groups. But worst of all was his constant sense of falling below the standards of his parents. His mother used her beauty and regal composure and absolute self-assurance to dominate the small part of the world that she valued, and his father conquered the rest of it with his easy charm, his wit and his athletic prowess. It had given Tony a fierce little inner satisfaction that they had so evidently disliked each other. Their marriage, at least, had been a total failure!

And his own? Aye, there had been the rub. His own should have been a shining example to them of all they had missed. And instead he found himself wed to a woman who had been permanently disillusioned by her discovery that he was not the man she had thought he was. He had, of course, been scared of being married for his money, and now he almost wished that he had been. He had made the mistake of proposing to a lovely and unworldly girl, a Long Island neighbor and childhood friend of his sister, who was just recovering from an infatuation with the lifeguard at their beach club who had ditched her for an heiress. She had turned in her desperation to the familiar Tony, professing to see in his reserve, modesty; in his hesitation, scrupulous honesty; and in his doubts and apprehensions, a search for truth. Annette was too honest to blame her husband for her crude misconceptions, but he held against her that she witheld her admiration, and he saw in her passionate devotion to the twin daughters that were born of their match a certain repudiation of himself.

Nor did it help matters that she had been disgusted by his lawsuit against his father's estate.

"Why can't you accept the will?" she had demanded. "Your dad settled more than enough on you. It wasn't his fault that you piddled away half of it on that fascist sheet of yours. And you know that he wasn't any more subject to undue influence from Clara than you are from me!"

"I deny that!"

"Oh, pooh. If you get any sort of settlement out of it, it'll be nothing but extortion. And if I ever get my paws on a penny of it, I'll turn it right back to Clara!"

"I'll certainly see that you won't!"

"You'd better had! You're carrying this hatred of Clara to a point of mania."

He could not altogether deny this, even to himself. His feeling against his father's widow had become a near obsession. And to make it worse, it was fed almost daily by the constant publicity that dogged the footsteps of the famed Mrs. Eric Tyler. The press had its share of lazy reporters, and it was simpler for them, in covering charity balls and tributary dinners, to concentrate on a handful of notables to represent society and whose exits and entrances at caravansaries of pleasure were easily spotted. Clara's graceful figure and designer gowns, her radiant smile for even the most pushing newsman, made her a facile target; her physiognomy had become almost as familiar to the reading public as that of a movie star. And with the record of her foundation spending to counterbalance the luxury of her home life, those same readers could identify with her without any uncomfortable feelings of overprivilege.

It was certainly hard to bear. That the woman who had robbed him of his father, his father's business and his father's wealth should parade before the world not as a shameless adventuress but as a great philanthropist was ample proof, if proof were really needed, that New York society was rotten to the core.

In the revenge that he took upon Clara in his fantasies he saw himself in the role of a Iago, except that his Iago's malignity was far from motiveless. He was not designing a devilish plot against an innocent woman for the exhilaration of playing a life-risking game. No, his Iago would contravene the wicked and expose the unworthy. But there was a hitch, even to fantasy. Shakespeare's Iago was the apparent friend of Desdemona and the intimate of Othello, while Tony was not even on speaking terms with his father's widow.

His only link with her, indeed, was his aunt Elmina, who had always been fonder of him than any of his other relatives, and as she served on the board of the Tyler Foundation and saw its chairman frequently she offered him his only opportunity of keeping an eye on the target of his hostility.

He suggested to Annette that they ask Aunt Elmina for a weekend at their Long Island house.

"Wouldn't a dinner in town do as well?" she counter-proposed. Annette was dutiful about her in-laws, but Miss Tyler for two days and nights was a bit of a task. "What are you trying to get out of the old girl now?"

"Must I always be after something?"

"Well, aren't you?"

He decided that a bit of bait might promote his wife's cooperation. "I want to see if there's any way she can get me on the foundation board. I know she's already proposed it once."

"And what would that get you? Assuming that Clara could ever overcome her aversion."

"The chance to help our favorite charities. Including our girls' school."

"Foundations don't give to private schools."

"They
can.
And they will for a special project if it appeals to them. What about that new library your committee is trying to raise money for?"

He could see that this shaft had gone home. "But I'm afraid you've blotted your copybook fatally with Clara."

"Even if you used all your winning ways on her? You and Aunt Elmina?"

"Don't be silly."

But she was obviously thinking about it. And only two days later she told him that she had given the requested invitation. Miss Tyler would arrive on Friday night in time for dinner.

She not only came; she was in a very expansive and gossipy mood. At dinner with only her nephew and his wife present she talked freely about the foundation's purchase of what she described as an almost sure Ghirlandaio and how cleverly persuasive the curator, Oliver Kip of the Museum of World Art, had been in his interview with the board.

"He and Clara have become quite a team," she concluded with a smirk that seemed to imply a closer intimacy. "I shouldn't be surprised if we bought a number of Italian paintings in the new year. Clara says he's a miracle worker in finding bargains. I wish he'd take
me
to some of his galleries!"

"Is he such a charmer, Auntie?" Annette asked.

"Oh, my dear, he is! Such a high intellectual brow and such courtly manners, even to an old bag like myself. And what an eye! Clara says he can spot a fake, like the princess and the pea, under a dozen mattresses."

Tony's lip curled. "He's really got Clara under his thumb, I take it."

"I don't like to put it that way," his aunt retorted with a sniff. "Clara has exercised her good judgment in his favor. And who's to say she's wrong?"

"Who's to say she's right? The man has bedazzled her, I gather. Is bedazzlement the way to make foundation grants?"

"I think Clara may have what the French call a
faible
for him," Miss Tyler conceded. "But a woman of Clara's intellect and experience can have that for a man without being bedazzled by him."

"Perhaps. But it sounds to me like that old play,
La Ronde.
Where a rich old man is snowed by a designing young woman who, when she grows old herself, is snowed by a young man who's after the fortune she got from the old one."

As soon as he had said this Tony realized his mistake. His aunt was at once indignant. He had given in to the almost irresistible impulse to jeopardize his goal for the pleasure of making one disagreeable remark. Iago would never have been such a fool!

"Clara is hardly an old woman, Tony. And Mr. Kip is almost her age. And she did
not
snow your father!"

"Forgive me, Auntie. It was just an idle crack."

"Well, you should learn not to make such cracks. Particularly in the family. I well realize how bitterly you and Clara have been opposed, but I think it's high time we put all that behind us. Peter Van Alstine has just persuaded her to double the size of the foundation board, which will give her five vacancies to fill. I have been trying to persuade her to put you on, but she has been so reluctant that I decided to postpone my next appeal until the new year. Now, however, with these openings, it seems too good a time to be missed. But it's never going to work if she gets wind of the way you're talking about her."

Tony could have cut his tongue out. But just when he least expected it, an unlikely ally came to his aid.

"That's sweet of you, Auntie," Annette put in. "And I'll do my best to see there are no more 'idle' cracks. At least in my hearing. Do you think it might help if I put in a word to Clara about a changed and repentant Tony? I'm not a bad liar, you know."

Miss Tyler beamed. "I think it would help a lot. She's always liked you, Annette. She might even put you on the board instead of Tony. Though I confess I'd love to see my brother's only son and my father's only grandson a trustee of the Tyler Foundation."

There was nothing for Tony to do after this but bide his time. Time, however, worked in his favor. He didn't even have to protest the odious idea of Annette taking his seat on the coveted board. His aunt's strong preference for blood kin, and the good will that Annette had built up in Clara by her opposition to her husband's lawsuit, produced, in only a few months' time, a letter from his stepmother requesting him to qualify as a trustee. She wrote, coolly but graciously:

"Your aunt has persuaded me that the time has come to bury the hatchet. She believes that your father would have forgiven you for attacking his settlements and that I should do likewise. Because I agree with her about your father's attitude I feel it behooves me to adapt mine to his. Half of the foundation's assets came from your father, and on my death the two halves will be joined. It seems eminently proper that a Tyler son should be represented on the board."

Tony decided that a brief letter indicating only his acceptance and hope for better relations in the future befitted his dignity. At his first meeting with the extended board he remained almost entirely silent. Clara greeted him, as he had anticipated, with a perfect simulacrum of cordiality, even granting him the dividend of one of her lovely open smiles. She was certainly not a grudge bearer, he reflected sourly. But then she had taken all the tricks in the game. So far.

The board met once a month, and it was easy to see, even with its amplified number, that it was essentially the chairman's rubber stamp. Clara presided efficiently and attractively, listening with studied attention to every comment, lauding gracefully the perspicacity of new suggestions, and delivering at last her own preference with clarity, modesty and humor, but nonetheless in a tone that carried with it a certain confidence that it would be adopted, at least in the case of any major grant. But it was also obvious that she had done her homework on the proposal so favored and that the objects of her bounty were worthy ones. And it didn't take Tony long to see that she was very clever in placating any possible rebels with minor grants to their pet charities. If he made a pitch for Annette's school library, he would be sure to draw down something. But that was not what he was after.

He made a great point of seeking the advice and even the friendship of the executive director. His excuse for the lavish lunches at expensive restaurants that he offered the latter was his need to seek instruction in all the workings of the foundation, that he might the better perform his function as a conscientious trustee.

Ignatius Reynolds, a gourmand, wine bibber and gossip, was only too enchanted to be his guest and do his duty as an instructing executive in this pleasant manner. "Piggy," as he was unceremoniously known to his intimates, was a stout, moon-faced man of forty-odd years, with fine, well-pressed cashmere suits draped over his ample figure and smiles, it seemed, for all. As an art critic for
Style Magazine
he had written witty and informative pieces on current urban shows that demonstrated his considerable acquaintance with contemporary artists and their different schools. He was amusing and eminently readable, but his greatest fan would not have accused him of profundity. Piggy seemed at peace with the world; he saw no reason to quarrel with any man, woman or creed. There had always to be a way of reconciling oneself to people or causes, no matter how perversely they seemed designed to obstruct one. He was generally supposed, for example, to be gay, but he did nothing openly to affirm or deny it. If he was in the closet, he made no effort to close the door.

The observant Tony, however, spotted other aspects of the man. He was vain about and rigidly tenacious of the social position it had taken him some years to attain. Gotham dinner parties with major Manhattan hostesses were his greatest delight in life. He had little ambition to be anything more than what he contentedly was, but he was always on the watch to see that this status was not diminished by so much as a jot or a tittle. He was, therefore, perfectly satisfied to play second fiddle in foundation matters to the great Clara, who included him regularly in her entertainments, but he was jealous of anyone who designed to exercise a greater influence on his sultana. She must have only one grand vizier, and it didn't take Tony long to see what he could do with
that