Her Infinite Variety (22 page)

One day at lunch at Lutèce, after Piggy had finished waving to his friends at other tables, and cocktails had been served, Tony introduced the subject of Oliver Kip. Piggy's warm response was immediate.

"If you want my frank opinion, Tony, I think he's too smooth by half. To the right people, that is. Or to what he considers the right people. To note the difference between the way Mr. Kip greets your stepmother and the way he greets the likes of me is ... well, awe-inspiring."

"I suppose he feels he has the foundation in his pocket."

"And I'm afraid that to some extent he does. So far, anyway, as we make grants to the Museum of World Art. Of course, he's supposed to have a sharp eye, at least for the Italian Renaissance."

"Supposed to have?"

Piggy hesitated. "Well, I guess I have to concede that when he's operating on his own, in that particular field, he probably makes few mistakes."

Tony moistened his lips in anticipation. "Could you explain what you mean by 'operating on his own'?"

"When he's not being pressed by his trustees or some big shot to acquire a specific object. Or, for example, when he's abroad, and some princess or duchess asks him for the weekend to her historic castle to dispose of a dubious Titian."

"You mean he can be had?"

"Well, let's put it that he can be influenced. He's a terrible snob, of course. You'll see that if he ever snubs you. Except he'll never do that, because you're a Tyler."

"Was he operating on his own when he got Clara to pay for the Ghirlandaio?"

"Mmm."

"You don't like the painting? Or you don't like the attribution?"

"Oh, I've nothing against the painting. It's very fine. But it's not a Ghirlandaio. And Kip knows it isn't. There's something wrong in the date. He just dreamed up the attribution and whispered it to your stepmother to make her think she was putting something over on the gallery. The portrait's a good one—only the foundation paid too much for it."

"How do you know all that?"

"I don't
know
it, Tony. One deduces things. I know the guy at Lecky's who sold the picture. He winked at me after the deal was made and murmured in my ear: 'And now we can expect Mr. Kip to be around to purchase a beautiful little drawing!'"

"You mean as a commission!"

Piggy pretended to look pained. "My dear Tony, must you be so crude? Lecky's can perfectly properly
sell
a drawing to Kip, can it not? And Lecky's can set its own price, can it not? And if Lecky's adjusts that price to reflect a warm, long-standing relationship with a customer who is not only a collector and an expert, but a frequent adviser to the gallery, who can object?"

"It's still most improper!"

"Of course it is. But we must live in this world. I have certainly learned that there are some stones that a foundation director need not go out of his way to turn over."

"You mean you and I should stand by and see the foundation and Clara herself swindled by this guy?"

"She hardly seems to mind!"

"Piggy, suppose she takes it into her head to marry him! How long do you think you'd last at the foundation if he got the least inkling that you know what you know?"

Piggy was now visibly upset. "But he won't! And I don't think she will marry him. And really, Tony, I don't wish to go on with this topic. It's too dangerous!"

"Look, Piggy. With your connections at galleries and museums it should be a simple matter for you to gather enough evidence of Kip's little transactions to blow him out of our picture. All you'd have to do is give it to me, and no one would ever know it came from you. I'd show it to Clara, as something that had been sent to me anonymously, and she'd give Kip his walking papers, so far as she was concerned. Oh, I know her! She can't stand deception!"

"But, Tony, who's going to give me information like that?"

"Almost anyone. Do you think Kip is popular? We know already that he's resented at World Art for grabbing more than his share of the acquisition funds. In the past the big boys at the cultural institutions used to be betrayed by disgruntled secretaries or discharged guards or griping clerks who ransacked their wastepaper baskets. But in our brave new world it's your right-hand man who turns you in, your primary assistant curator, your trusted researcher, who sticks the dagger in your back. After all, who has most to gain from your fall?"

"No, no, it's too risky, much too risky, please, Tony, no more of this!"

Tony knew when to stop; he was learning something about Iago at last. And he knew that he would also know when to pick the matter up again. He even wondered if he would have to, if Piggy, now primed, would not do it for him.

C
LARA COULD NOT
seem to accept gracefully the apparent happiness and fulfillment of her new life. What had she done—or what had she been—to deserve such a fruition of hopes that in the past she had almost fretfully smothered? Nothing, she reminded herself, ever worked out half as well as it was even supposed to. But if by a miracle it did, as now actually seemed to be happening, was it necessary to question one's deserts? Was it ever anything but the blindest luck that one had not been born a leper in darkest Africa or a Jew in the Holocaust? Couldn't she simply lay down her hand and declare a grand slam?

Or at least a small one. She loved her work at the foundation, but she continued to resent Tony's sombre features at the boardroom table. Still, he behaved himself—so far. And Sandra was more of a problem, now that she was a freshman at Barnard. Clara was surprised that she had not gone farther afield for college to free herself from living at home, but apparently there was a young man who kept her in town (she was not communicative about this) and then, too, she belonged to a very active local women's lib group. Sandra was not argumentative, like so many of her contemporaries, nor did she seem eager to convert her mother to her causes; it was really rather worse than that. She seemed to regard Clara as material too unpromising, as someone whose day has passed and who should be treated with benign neglect.

But none of that was really the point. Of course, it wasn't! Why, Clara demanded of her lineless image in the morning mirror as she rubbed powder into her cheeks, was she always shying away from her principal concern.
When
should she make a probing analysis of her relationship with Oliver? It was only perfect, she kept telling herself, because she wanted so desperately to have it perfect. She went to his apartment every Wednesday and Saturday afternoon—he was nothing if not methodical—where they made love rapturously but briefly. He continued to enjoy sketching her in the nude. They would chatter and laugh together about all kinds of subjects—except love. He was always delightful but never really serious. Except, of course, about Italian art.

At last, however, she had put the question to him. After all, she
was
a woman.

"Tell me something, Oliver. Have you ever loved anyone? And I don't mean your mother."

"As a matter of fact, I
didn't
really love my mother. Our relationship was more like Agrippina and Nero."

"And what is ours?"

Oliver shook his head as if stumped. Then he seemed to pass his case to Shelley: "I can give not what men call love, / But wilt thou accept not / The worship the heart lifts above / And the heavens reject not?"

Clara had to smile. She had almost expected it! "The desire of the moth for the star?"

He nodded. "And the night for the morrow."

"No way!" she retorted with a laugh. "Shelley was a monstrous betrayer who tried to cover it up with lovely lines. But who but fools were fooled?"

"I see you may be that rare woman, Clara, who can take what life offers and not spoil it, like Oliver Twist, by asking for more."

"Is
that
why you never married?"

He was almost grave for once. "And never shall."

She turned her face away. She was afraid he might make out a shade of disappointment. Was it true, after all, that she was like all his other women, whoever they had been? But if he suspected any such reaction he did not show it. He seemed to be offering her what to his mind was surely the greatest compliment of all: that of assuming that she was as highly civilized as himself.

"My life is not the kind that can be improved by being shared," he went on to explain. "And I'm not such a clumsy ass as to seek a role that wouldn't become me."

So there it was. She had suspected it; she had sought it, and she had got it! And she was going to live with it, if it killed her.

"Do you know something?" she asked. "I got your birthday from your secretary. And it's next Saturday! Let us go gallery-vanting for a master drawing!"

Ah, the glitter in his eyes was almost worth it!

"And will you pick one out for me?"

"Do you think I'm such a fool? No, you'll do that, of course. My fun will be in watching you do it."

The next Saturday morning, before she set out to meet him, she had breakfast with Sandra.

"Will you be in for lunch?" she asked her. "Oliver's coming. He might be able to help you with some fine points on your paper on Machiavelli in modern world politics."

"But Oliver hates silly questions from amateurs."

"Your questions wouldn't be silly, dear."

"He might make me feel they were."

"Oliver? His manners are perfect."

"But I can see they're manners."

Clara looked at her daughter more closely now. "You don't really like Oliver, do you?"

"Does it matter? He's not
my
friend."

"No, but he's mine. And if my daughter dislikes him, it interests me to know why."

Sandra appeared to be debating the justice of this inquiry. But at last she nodded affirmatively. "Very well. He strikes me as a man for whom other people don't really exist. In any important way, that is. I may be going too far. Some great art critic might exist for him. A Berenson, say."

"He thinks Berenson's greatly overrated."

"Well, there you are. I suspect he thinks everyone's overrated. Except Oliver Kip. And there's something else about him that I don't buy. I'm sure he doesn't think women play any great role in art."

"Well, they didn't in the Renaissance."

"Just Lucrezia Borgias, is that it? Ladies with whom it was not quite safe to dine?"

"I hope he doesn't think that of me!"

"Oh, no, Mom, you're his Isabella d'Este. But even she comes a long way after the least male artist or despot of the Renaissance."

"Darling, do you ever think that your passionate espousal of women's lib may carry you a bit to extremes?"

"Not as much as your disdain of it blinds you to some important facts."

Clara saw now that they were going to be serious, perhaps more than she strictly needed. But there had not been so many opportunities, and she decided to take this one. "I should really appreciate it, my dear, if you would tell me what those facts are."

There was another pause before Sandra's decisive nod seemed again to clear the air. "All right. Here goes. Your being put on the board of Riker's Oil and Gas. And of Western Air. You think that's such a stride in the recognition of women?"

"And it isn't?"

"It might have been if what the companies were seeking was a woman who could help them in their business. But they weren't. What they wanted was a shining token of their boasted freedom from gender bias. A beautiful great lady with a name famous in fashion. A showpiece! And they got one!"

Clara gripped the edge of the table. A blow from a child was always unnerving. "I suppose you think my whole life has been like that."

"Oh, Mother, I'm not judging you!"

"Are you not?"

"No! It's not your fault. You belong to the last generation of women who have been brought up to use their sex appeal to further their ambition."

"I see. I'm glad, anyway, you admit I had it. And your generation, they disdain all that, I suppose. They don't care if they're wall-eyed or hunchbacks?"

"No, it's not that. People are always going to play a trump card if they think they have one. What I mean is that a serious professional woman today, in becoming a leader in law or medicine or business, regards her charm or glamor or whatever you call it, and if she has any, as something belonging to an entirely different department from her brains and drive. And to be used for entirely different purposes. Just as men do."

"Whereas my poor contemporaries mixed them all up?"

"Something like that."

"You really think we're just courtesans, isn't that it?"

"Mother, you're going much too far."

"And tell me this. You think I married your father and Eric for their money?"

Sandra looked as if she were about to repudiate this, but she suddenly closed her lips. "Would you have married either of them had he been poor?"

"No!" Clara rose at this. "Enough of this. Now go to your class or your meeting or whatever you're going to!"

It was a relief to get out of the house and into a cold morning, and she walked all the way to her appointment with Oliver on Madison Avenue. They visited four different galleries in two crowded hours before he took her to a shop specializing in baroque drawings of the seventeenth century, a period rather later than Oliver's favorite, but she had learned that he was extending his taste to include stage designs. And when he drew out of a folio one by Andrea Pozzo she could tell by his reverent handling of it that they were looking at his birthday gift.

It was the sketch for the backdrop of a scene in ancient Rome of a tragedy or opera, showing a magnificent imperial stairwell winding up and upwards to seeming infinity and, towering over it, a glorious architectural fantasy of arches, domes, cupolas, pediments and myriad tall columns, while teeming all over the steps were the tiny togaed figures of the citizens who ruled the world.

"Of course, I see why you like it so," she told him.

"Meaning that you don't?"

"Oh, I admire it. Who wouldn't? It's a dazzling thing. But I don't agree with it. It says that art is all and people are nothing. Happy birthday, dear Oliver! Shall I tell them to wrap and send, or will you take it with you?"