House Party (3 page)

Mrs. Ames felt a motion at her elbow and jumped slightly. "Oh! Oh, Nanny, you
did
give me a start."

"Oh, I'm sorry Mrs. Ames," Nanny said. "I was just doin’ up the children's rooms and I noticed that the sheets I put on Mr. Bryan's bed was wearing a little thin. So I said to meself: ‘I'll just switch them with Mr. Paul's, which will be all right with him for he never notices them de-tails. Whereas,’ I said, ‘everything's got to be just
so
for Mr. Bryan.' And now, if you'll just pardon me, mum, I'll finish up with Bryan's room and go out and watch the men settin' up the fireworks display."

"Very well, Nanny, and . . .
What
fireworks display?"

"Why, Mrs. Ames, all them gigantic fireworks Mrs. Clendenning ordered. There's two men out behind the rose garden settin’ them up now, and . . ."

"Violet!" Mrs. Ames roared. "Violet Clendenning, come here this instant!" Mrs. Ames strode down the hall to where her sister was plumping lace pillows on the chaise longue in the rose room.

"Just a moment, Lily dear, I do think a pouf in a lovely sort of mauve would be . . ."

"What's this I hear about fireworks?"

"Oh, Lily, I wanted to
surprise
you . . .”

"You certainly have!"

"It's to be
my
treat. I just got to thinking about the lovely pyrotechnic displays dear Papa used to have over the Fourth and so I just drove over to Bellport to this man who manufactures them and went hog wild over his catalogue. It's going to be
divine!
We'll have rockets and shooting stars and aerial bombs and girandoles and Catherine wheels and the Niagara Falls . . ."

"Violet, you really have lost your mind!"

"And I did want to buy President and Mrs. Eisenhower in amber light, but it takes six men to get them started and they're said to burn out very quickly. So I chose a golden eagle instead. Oh, Lily, the Fourth's going to be just like it always was!"

"Well, I give
up!"
Felicia Clendenning Choate gasped as she struggled to a sitting position in the big gold bed in the French room. "It's bad enough to have to spend the livelong summer out in this mausoleum, but what with Robin and Emily screaming all morning and that dreary
kraut
screaming at
them,
and Mummy screaming at all of
them,
and Aunt Lily screaming at Mummy, you can't close an eye!" She poked a cigarette in her mouth and lit it. A bit of live ash fell to the sheet and burned a tiny black hole. "Damn," Felicia growled.

She reached out and grasped the copy of
Vogue
which was always at her side. The issue was two months old, but Felicia looked tit it every morning before awakening, every night before retiring, and several times in between. The magazine opened automatically to the full-page photograph of Felicia herself. Although she knew the caption by heart, she read it carefully again.

Mrs. Clendenning Choate, the former Felicia Clendenning, wears Balenciaga's bouffant ballgown of marvelously murky milkglass coloured
peau de soie,
spiked with a bold, bold bow of cerise—a perfect foil for her alabaster skin, her ebony hair. Busy Mrs. Choate devotes her time to her children, Robin and Emily; to charity; and to planning perfect little suppers for six in her
boîte du bijou
of a house in Gracie Square.

Felicia closed the magazine and blew a cloud of smoke up toward the ceiling. How she hated being stuck out here in Pruitt's Landing with Fraulein and the children and Mummy making a perfect ass of herself twenty-four hours a day! Well, that was just
one
unpleasant facet of Felicia's life.

She thought of the
Vogue
picture again. Mrs. Clendenning Choate. Mrs, Clendenning Choate, indeed. God damn it, I could have been
Lady
Choate if only everything hadn't been against me.

Life, Felicia thought, certainly
was
a louse. Even her wedding to an R.A.F. flier got messed up because his leave was canceled and the ceremony had to be performed in City Hall in two minutes flat with no reception
at all.
The whole affair had been just about as chic as a shotgun wedding.
C'est la guerre,
indeed!

But there was more to marriage than just a wedding. Felicia had followed her husband, like a proper war bride, and how had
that
worked out? Miserably. Four years in ghastly places like Nassau and Bermuda with a lot of frumpy R.A.F. wives knitting balaclavas.

And after the war, when it was all over, when Felicia had enough money of her own—not to mention Michael's miserable pittance—to live in London with some degree of style, had they done it?
No!
Here Felicia had dreamed of a trim little Regency house in Mayfair, where Uncle Ned could introduce her to the really smart set. But had she spent so much as a fortnight in London in all the years she was married? She had not! Instead, Michael buried her at his family's place in a chilly provincial county where nobody talked about anything but foals and babies and the only social event was the annual horse show.

No, life in the Stately Homes of England with your name in Burke's
Peerage
wasn't all it was cracked up to be. And what breeders those dismal Choates were—never happy unless their wives and mares were pregnant. There'd been a number of scenes about Felicia's having children and finally Michael had tricked her into producing an heir to the title. Then Felicia really put her foot down. Heir to the title! That was a laugh! Felicia thought of the visiting cards she had ordered as a bride:

Captain, The Honourable Michael and Mrs. Choate

There had been words with Cartier's about the rightness of this, but Felicia had been firm. Then when it was engraved, in discreet shaded roman, for all the world to see—hinting of distinction and the day when Michael would succeed to the earldom—Michael had tossed the whole lot into the fire. "But my poor darling," he had said, "it's the worst
possible
form. You
never
put your honourable on a card. You don't even
say
it."

"Then how do people
know?'
Felicia had screamed.

"Who cares whether they know? It's a lot of nonsense anyhow."

So there was nothing to do but wait until Michael's potty old father died and Michael could come into the title. And what had the old maniac done? He'd lived on and on, getting older by the minute, and then—as though to spite Felicia—he died on the day their divorce became final. Ten wasted years and never so much as a "Lady" to put before her name. Now Felicia was just Mrs. Clendenning Choate and Michael was married again to some horse-faced county girl named Gwyneth. Gwyneth had the title and Felicia had nothing but complete custody of Robin and Emily and the memory of saddle sores.

And now that Felicia was free to come and go as she pleased, what had happened to all the young men who squired her at parties? Most of them had married and gone to Westchester, to fat and to seed. Those who hadn't had turned to the boys or the bottle, the Anglican Church or the analyst's couch.

Yawning and groaning, Felicia reached above her head and yanked at the Aubusson bell-pull. A moth flew out. "God, it's like the Choates' house," she said aloud. "And I'd have just about as good a chance of getting breakfast. Well, the summer out here isn't
costing
anything and maybe it's just the setting I need to bring John around. Southerners are supposed to care about these old monstrosities of houses. Roots in the past or something.”

John Burgess was really the only decent thing that had happened to Felicia since the day she got control of her own money He was the homeliest man she'd ever seen. He came from the: South, but thank God he didn't have one of those you-all accents. He was a lawyer and made pretty decent money, Felicia thought.

"At least from the fees his firm charges, he
ought
to make decent money," she said. "But he's a gentleman and he's presentable, even if he's ugly and not very tall. Well, neither am I so tall. He's a little older than I am—thirty-six, I guess. And he likes the children, although I
wish
he wouldn't call Robin 'Bob.'" Felicia blew an other cloud of smoke. "God, isn't that woman
ever
going to bring my coffee?" And
another
thing about John, even if he isn't Don Juan, he can take you to dinner without groping you in the taxi. No, a girl could do a lot worse; a whole lot worse. And asking him out here for the weekend is a pretty safe bet. He can look over the old ancestral mansion and he'll see how God-damned wholesome all of the Ameses are. Yes, this might be
just
the thing, I guess I'll meet the train in that green voile and then . . .

The door of Felicia's bedroom burst open.

"Muvver, Muvver, make Emily stop teasing me."

"I am
not
teasing him, Mother, Robin's a big . . .”

"Oh, for God's sake! Robin! Emily! Get off my bed this instant Fraulein!
Will
you take these children out of here!

"Hey, kids, lookee," a New York urchin shouted. "Look at the old geezer ridin' around in a car with a back porch!”

If Uncle Ned Pruitt—or Beau Ned as Lillian Russell had called him, could not stop traffic himself, his automobile certainly could. Uncle Ned had reluctantly accepted the horseless carriage as a more expedient, though less becoming, means of transportation than the C-spring Victoria.

But his thinking had stopped at the very zenith of automotive pittance. Uncle Ned had tried a number of different motors and rejected them for good and sufficient reasons. He had found the Rolls trite, the Daimler graceless, the Isotta-Frascini chancy. Naturally, he wouldn't be caught dead in an American car. But Uncle Ned had hit his true stride in 1930 when he had bought—or, rather, had had made to his specifications—the car which carried him today. It was a Hotchkiss landaulet of the most astonishing convertibility.

The roof could be arranged so that the chauffeur was exposed to the elements and Uncle Ned enclosed in the tonneau. Or Uncle Ned could be outdoors in the back seat and the chauffeur sheltered. At other times they could both be undercover. Or, as today, the chauffeur in front could be out in the fresh air, and Uncle Ned, behind, could be on display as well. The sections of the roof above Uncle Ned and that above the driver's seat operated electrically—a daring innovation for 1930—and sometimes they operated entirely of their own volition. They were given to dark moods, those two roofs. But most of the time they stayed put, and everyone had to admit that no matter where the roofs were or what they were doing, Uncle Ned's Hotchkiss was one hell of a sight.

It had been painted and repainted and rerepainted a spanking bottle green; upholstered and reupholstered and rereupholstered in the finest fawn broadcloth. It had two spare wheels, a luggage rack on top and an elaborately fitted trunk anchored to the poop deck. Every throb, cough and wheeze commanded the attention of a specialist. Its body was scrubbed, rubbed and massaged like a film star's. Elderly hypochondriac that it was, the car went monthly to an esoteric garage for a complete physical and semi-annually for a thorough check-up. Like Uncle Ned himself, the car was still young, still game, still dashing—if a little silly.

"The first stop, Sturgis, will be for young Mr. Paul. That's the Futura Building," Uncle Ned called through the speaking tube. "And don't go so fast. You’re disturbing my boater.” Indeed, Uncle Ned's straw hat was tugging slightly at the elastic leash which anchored it to his lapel button.

"Sorry, sir," Sturgis said, and decreased the speed of the car as it made its impressive way up lower Park Avenue.

Uncle Ned was dapper. Naturally slim, he was corseted to an astonishing wasp-waistedness. As with his car, he had chosen his perfect period in clothing and stopped right there. It was, needless to say, the period of utmost elegance. His taste in suitings had reached fruition in 1910 and seeing Uncle Ned dressed for battle was like looking through a back issue of
Cutter and Tailor.
One could not look at Uncle Ned, dressed in his willowy city clothes, his tweed knickerbockers, his ice-cream suits, his bowlers and boaters and beavers without imagining a caption such as "For Town," "A Country Costume," "At Ascot" or
"Au Croquet"
printed beneath his narrow feet. His wardrobe was as unforgettable as it was extensive.

The touring company of
Floradora
traveled lighter than Uncle Ned. The top of the Hotchkiss was piled high with his Hermes luggage. Packed methodically by the faithful Sturgis were Uncle Ned's dinner clothes, his cummerbunds and mess jackets, his pleated batiste evening shirts. There was a bag containing his ice-cream suits, his biscuit flannel, his striped blazers. Three suits of silk pajamas, six changes of silk underwear and an assortment of dressing gowns and smoking jackets were housed in another satchel. An outsized hatbox contained a Panama hat, a yachting cap, a cricket cap, a tweed cap, a solar topee, a gray topper and an extra straw boater.

In the shoe trunk were carefully chalked white buckskins, boned country cordovans, glossy pumps, black calf oxfords and a variety of house slippers. The cosmetic bag held the special toilet soap, the bath essence, the Silverblu (for that persistent yellow streak in Uncle Ned's white hair), the baby oil, the youth cream, the sleep mask, the emoluments for massage, the colognes, the scent bottles, the shaving soap, the beaver brush, the four razors and four tooth brushes labeled "Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday," the various tweezers and brushes and clippers and shears for Uncle Ned's hair and mustache, the buffers and orange sticks and emory boards and cuticle scissors. A fitted case of medicaments held everything, short of embalming fluid, to meet any emergency which might overtake Uncle Ned.

A specially-made traveling desk held his correspondence, his letter paper—four kinds—his diary, notes for his memoirs, signed photographs of famous friends in silver frames, and a Douay version of
The Bible.
An oddly shaped container held a folding triptych, a lapis lazuli crucifix, a creche, votive lamps and a collection of unusual rosaries, for Uncle Ned was a recent convert to Roman Catholicism.

In addition there was the emergency trunk, containing clothes for any unforeseen occasion such as a masked ball, torrential rains, a cold snap, a yachting party or a funeral of the first class.

Then there was Sturgis' baggage, which was considerable. Where once there had been a chauffeur, a cook, a secretary and Sturgis, now Sturgis was all that remained—all Uncle Ned could afford. When he drove Mr. Pruitt, Sturgis wore his chauffeur's livery; when he attended Mr. Pruitt, Sturgis wore the sack suit of a valet; there was a white jacket—reminiscent of the dental parlor—which Sturgis wore during Mr. Pruitt's bath, massage and barbering; there was a black alpaca jacket for mending and pressing, and for exercising Mr. Pruitt's chow dog Fang; denim coveralls for washing the car; and a ticking apron for housecleaning.

Finally there was Uncle Ned's jewel box containing the essential changes of rings, watches, studs and links for the well-turned-out male. This cargo Uncle Ned considered to be the bare minimum for a gentleman and his gentleman's gentleman over a long three-day weekend. Guarding the jewel box was Fang.

If Uncle Ned's taste in clothes had reached its peak in 1910 and his taste in equipages in 1930, his taste in livestock had come to full flower in 1920. Uncle Ned's dog—or dogs—was always a chow named Fang. He had resisted the high, but transient, fashion of the borzoi, the scotty, the poodle and the boxer. Seated next to Uncle Ned was Fang VII, his almond eyes squinting against the sun, his amaranthine tongue hanging out. The car was, needless to say, already crowded.

"Here we are, sir," Sturgis said, coming to a smart stop in front of a towering structure of aluminum and glass.

"What? The Futura Building already?"

"Yes sir."

"What time is it, Sturgis?"

"Twenty till three, sir."

"Hmm, early. I well recall the day when it took a carriage thirty minutes to get from Gramercy Park up to here. Of course these were all private residences in those days. Well, punctuality is the etiquette of kings, is it not? I shall just go up and tell young Paul I'm ready. Mind you keep an eye on Fang, Sturgis." Uncle Ned descended regally from the considerable height of his car and made his imperious way into the Futura Building.

Four seconds and thirty-five stories later, Uncle Ned stepped out of one of the Futura Building's Electronic Brain elevators. "I assume that my stomach will be up in the next lift," he said to the attendant. The elevator door slid closed behind him and he stood in the reception room of Vahan Rabadab Associates—"Architects of the Future."

Uncle Ned put up his window-glass monocle and uttered an amazed little gasp. For Vahan Rabadab Associates certainly meant business when it came to being modern. The reception floor was covered with an abstract mosaic, derivative of Matisse, made of bottle bottoms, copper wire and chips of marble imbedded into Armstrong's linoleum. One wall was executed in blue marble with an obscenity in its grain. A second wall was banked with plants which Uncle Ned suspected of being carnivorous. A third wall was made of pre-revolutionary brick. The fourth was covered with black leather, and on it hung renderings of four new apartment buildings which Vahan Rabadab Associates were constructing.

The room was wanly lighted by a tortured tangle of brass tubing and tiny bulbs which writhed across the ceiling. Through his monocle, Uncle Ned could see as far as the receptionist's desk—limed teakwood. On it were a gold telephone, an intarsia bowl of brown orchids and the receptionist's knitting. Squinting a bit, Uncle Ned at last made out the receptionist herself, She had one head, two eyes, one mouth and the usual component of limbs. In this room she was somehow out of key, but very reassuring. Uncle Nod cleared his throat sententiously.

"You wanted somethingue?"

"Yes, my dear, would you be good enough to tell Mr. Paul Ames that his uncle, Mr. Pruitt, is here?"

"Cert'ny. Won'tchu be seatid?" She gestured toward a low granite slab.

"Thank you, no." Uncle Ned twiddled his monocle.

A perfectly plain black telephone rang at Table No. One in the drafting room. Paul Ames jumped slightly, carefully put down his Inking pen and answered. "Oh, golly " he said, "the old goat's early. Tell him I’ll be out in just a second."

Paul Ames was twenty-seven. He was tall and as delicately boned as his mother. His eyes, once he removed the tortoiseshell glasses he wore for drawing, were as large and black as all the eyes in his family. He bit his nails and wished he didn't.

Now he returned to his work with frantic speed. It made him
guilty to rush through the last strokes of a final drawing. He felt even guiltier to be working on the drawing at all because it was a drawing of just the kind of thing he hated most—something that looked good on paper and was totally impractical. To occupy Table No. One at Vahan Rabadab Associates amounted to being crown prince and junior partner material. Mr. Rabadab himself, as well as Mr. Zuleikian and Mr. Nahigian and even Mr. Kelly, the junior associate, had made that clear to Paul. But being at Table No. One and obviously the sultan's favorite made Paul feel guilty before the other ninety-nine young architects in the drafting room. He wanted to be one of
them—
except he didn't want to be one of them at all in that he didn't want to be working for Vahan Rabadab Associates.

Since the war, Rabadab and his jolly helpers had made close to ten million dollars by putting up modern apartment buildings on expensive New York corners. Mr. Rabadab could buy what had once been a brownstone house adequate for one well-heeled family and replace it almost overnight with a monstrous tower of flats ingeniously dovetailed to contain a hundred well-heeled families. Each flat featured a picture window, a hanging terrace, a Rabadab Electronuclear Demi-Kitchenette and a monthly rental that would curl your hair. All Rabadab buildings looked like banks of file cabinets with the drawers open. Lewis Mumford deplored them; the International Institute for the Furtherance of Good Design despised them; Paul detested them. But the public
loved
them. The rich and the new rich battled for leases. A mink coat and two Rabadab rooms on Park Avenue was the dream of every stenographer.

"I'd better call Claire and tell her to get ready right now," Paul said to himself. He picked up the telephone. "Plaza three, seven three hundred, please . . . No, it's
not
a business call . . . Yes, I know he's waiting out there. Tell him I'll be along in a second . . . I can't help that.
I
don't like the reception room, either. Tell him I’ll be right out . . . No, I said Plaza three, seven three hundred."

Paul was in a sweat. The only thing that calmed him down was that in a matter of seconds he'd be talking to Claire and whenever he talked to Claire visions of spacious modern country houses, trees and dogs and babies, peace and quiet and love washed over him. "Miss Devine, please," Paul said. "Miss Claire Devine."

But just then the door of the drafting room burst open and Uncle Ned surged in, his lilac moire waistcoat gleaming like neon. "See here, young man," he squeaked, "it is not my custom to be kept waiting like a tradesman in . . ."

One hundred and ninety-eight eyes looked up from ninety-nine drafting tables. Ninety-nine young architectural mouths dropped open. Paul wondered fleetingly how long it would take him to burrow his way through the floor.

"Hello, Claire? Claire, honey, can you leave right away? My uncle is getting restive."

Claire Devine had no time to admire the Buyers' Lounge today. Ordinarily she loved to dawdle there. It had comfortable chairs, copies of
Vogue
and
Woman's Wear Daily,
pink plumbing and free Kleenex. It was a symbol. It had been Claire's privilege to frequent this Faubourg St. Germain of the garment business for only a fortnight and the magic had not quite worn off. But now there was no time to tarry. She could do just half to her face what she had planned to without keeping Paul waiting out on Fifth Avenue.

With a practiced hand, Claire began to remove her make up at the dressing table.

"Ahntcha gonna say howdy-do, doll?" It was Miss Golden, the buyer in Custom Hats, sitting stocking-footed in a soiled satin slipper chair.

"Oh, Gert," Claire said swiftly, "I was in such a rush I didn't even
see
you. I've got to dash off for the weekend, darling." First names and little endearments were the order of the Buyers' Lounge. They showed that one belonged.

"Boy friend?"

"Mmm-hmm," Claire said guardedly. Vulgar and garrulous as she was, Gert Golden was the Queen Mother of the buyers at the shop—they
never
referred to it as a "store";
that
implied pots and pans. Gert had a finger in every pie and even the society women who worked there "for a lark," knew the wisdom of keeping in Gert's good graces. Cross Gert and you were through, but play up to the old hag and she could be useful. She had total recall of her thirty years in trade and you couldn't name a single distinguished customer without getting a complete dossier from Miss Golden.