The Golden Calves (11 page)

He brought the cup to his lips and drank too quickly, scalding his tongue. Fire! Oh, my God, fire! The apartment where three quarters of the collection was kept was moderately safe, but this long white structure that Augusta had refused to build of stone, this rambling two-story villa so charmingly adapted to the garden and lawns around it and to the ivy that crept over the columns of the verandas, would it not explode into a ball of flame before the pictures could be removed? There were sprinkling outlets in every room, fire extinguishers in every corridor, and each new member of the local fire brigade was invited to cocktails and instructed about the treasures—for hose water could be as damaging as the worst blaze—but what was all of this against the fury of a real conflagration?
Peter,
he warned himself, as he felt his heartbeat dangerously quicken, remember: each minute of life is to be lived
in
that minute. And there is no fire now. Enjoy your pictures
now.

He breathed more easily. He had not really burned his tongue after all. Ida had gone out to the pantry and was coming back with his poached eggs and bacon. He never tired of poached eggs and bacon. And here was Augusta, serene and understanding, with her lovely pale gray skin and hair, and sapphire eyes which still managed to be mild, and those wonderful big pearls on her ear lobes and a sweater that matched them. Why had she married him, this rare creature, who at fifty-five could have passed for ten years younger?

“Good morning, my darling wife.”

"Good morning, my dear.”

"Seeing you revives me. I was thinking of fire again."

"What a silly thought. You know the house is as safe as we can make it."

“Except we could always move the best pictures to the apartment."

“And not have them here where we enjoy them and where we live almost half the year? You know you'd hate that. Just remember, my dear, they're a good deal safer than they ever were with their former owners, in France or wherever. Probably in some old château with no air conditioning or firefighting equipment. You've done more than your duty by them.”

Ah, she always said the right thing! When she wanted to, anyway. But then, immediately, he felt the need to pull her down a bit, perhaps because he depended on her so much.

“Why is the table set for five?" he demanded. "Who besides ourselves and Inez and Julia are expected? You know, Gussie, I will
not
have children at the breakfast table. Breakfast should be a quiet meal."

"Inez promised Carter he would graduate from the children's table when hé was twelve.”

"But he won't be twelve until next month!”

"Really, Peter, must we be so technical?”

“Yes! When it comes to a question of noisy breakfasts. I shall not abrogate the rule a day before the prescribed limit. Ida, will you please move Carter's plate to the conservatory.” And he added in a lower voice while Ida was carrying this out, “Give Inez an inch, and you know what she'll take!”

Inez Eliot, the oldest of the three Hewlett daughters, had been abandoned by her husband, a TV anchorman in Memphis, for an eighteen-year-old girl and had come resentfully home with her brood of five. It had been agreed that she would live in the Long Island house, which her parents occupied only on weekends, until she had found something of her own, and Peter had at first relished the prospect of the big place resounding once more with the sound of children, but as the indolent Inez seemed to find herself thoroughly comfortable and well waited on, the arrangement now threatened to become permanent.

Her presence, large and what her father distastefully deemed "dumpy" or even "doughy"—he could not quite help a concealed sympathy for his errant son-in-law—crowned by an Iberian blackness of hair and brow, followed hard upon the waitress's removal of her son's service. Peter used to wonder if naming her for Augusta's Spanish grandmother had not affected her looks.

“I thought, Mummie, that Carter would be eating with us."

Inez's small, red-haired, freckled boy appeared suddenly from behind his parent. ‘It's all right, Mom. I'd rather be with the others. But tell me first, Grandpa, is that a Manet? Our new art teacher said yesterday you own one of the great Manets.”

“All Manets are great,” replied Peter, already regretting the boy's banishment. “And, yes, that is indeed a Manet. Do you like it? I daresay you think you could draw a more realistic-looking gondola.”

The boy squinted for a moment at the Venetian study and then shook his head. "Nobody could paint a better gondola than that."

Peter grunted with pleasure as the boy ran off into the conservatory. "That lad may grow up to be a collector.”

"Carter has a painter's eye,” Augusta agreed.

"I don't know where he'd get the money to buy paintings,” Inez grumbled. "And anyway, if that's the case, I'd rather he'd be a painter and not just a collector."

"'Just' a collector, Inez?"

"Well, it's not belittling collectors, is it, Daddy, to put painters ahead of them?”

“It most certainly is. And your remark was obviously designed to put me in my place."

“Oh, Dad, you're so prickly. Surely even you will admit that collecting is not as creative as painting or sculpting.”

"I will admit no such thing! Where would Italian art be without the great patrons of the Renaissance? Who would have supported Raphael or Michelangelo had there been no collecting popes?”

"We know all that. But today you don't need patrons. And if you did, they'd be a dime a dozen. Every millionaire from here to Tokyo collects impressionists.”

"I suppose it's too much to expect that one's own children should try to understand what one has spent one's lifetime trying to accomplish,” Peter said bitterly. “But I still wish to instruct you, Inez, that my collection is not simply a medley of European canvases. It is a carefully selected assemblage of those European and Asiatic paintings and drawings that have given rise to the greatest number of what I call American counterparts. And I have attempted to match these with the works of Americans executed under their influence so that my collection will give a sense of the glory of the inspiration and the glory of the result!”

But Inez was quite as determined not to be impressed as he was to impress her. "Surely you don't need that many pictures to make the simple point that American artists were influenced by foreigners."

“But I do! To make my point not simply but magnificently.”

“And how do you make it with the pictures locked up here or in the apartment?”

“You know they're always available to students," Peter retorted in exasperation. "Weren't you complaining only last week of the bus tour from Hunter College that interrupted your children's sacred lunch hour? And of course eventually they'll all be together in a museum.”

"All? You mean you're planning to leave your
whole
collection to charity?”

“Certainly I am. If by charity you mean the Museum of North America.”

“Whoa! I knew you were leaving the American paintings there. And I suppose they belong there. But the European ones? The
great
paintings? Dad, that's a fortune!”

“You think they should go to your hungry kids, Inez?”

This last, in a clear, cool, yet not unfriendly tone, came from the doorway where Inez's sister Julia had just appeared. The only still unmarried, yet handsomest of the daughters, this tall, dark-haired Miss Hewlett had the soft features and shining blue eyes of her mother, somewhat hardened, or perhaps jelled, by the smart cut of her brown suit and maroon blouse, dressed as she was for the city and for a busy day at her decorating firm.

"I hardly think it's proper, girls,” Augusta intervened, “that we should be discussing your father's will at the breakfast table. Or at any meal, for that matter.”

“Well, if I'm going to be disinherited, I think I'd better know about it,” Inez exclaimed, aggrieved.

"It's all very well for you, Mummie—you have your own money. And for you, Julia—you have your business and no other mouths to feed. But I think those with families, like Doris and me, are entitled to know where we stand.”

"Disinherited!” Peter cried irately. “You deserve to be disinherited for such an asinine statement. Who do you think supports you now? And where do you think your trust fund came from? If my collection were left to the family, there wouldn't be money enough in my estate to pay the death taxes. Most of that stuff is worth ten times what I paid for it. It only makes sense to put it in a museum.”

"Peter, you mustn't get so excited,” Augusta warned him. "Now I suggest we talk about something else.”

“Wait a sec, Ma,” Inez enjoined her. “With inflation what it is today, how can anyone be sure there'll be enough money left to go around? You and Dad have eight grandchildren now and probably more to come. Julia may still marry and have kids.” But the glance that the fecund Inez cast at her sister seemed to place this in doubt. "Where would Dad have been without
his
inheritance, I'd like to know?”

"But I've told you, Inez," her father, furious at this last, almost shouted. ‘The taxes would eat up the estate!"

"Not if the pictures were sold. Then there'd be enough for the taxes
and
your family."

"The pictures sold!”

"Well, not all of them, of course. You could direct that certain ones be sold and others go to your children and the museum. What's wrong with that?”

“Oh, you would allow me to leave a few to the museum? That's very gracious of you, Inez. I suppose I should be duly grateful. Which ones could go to the museum, do you suppose? The Victorian academics? Are they cheap enough now? But no, they're coming back, aren't they?”

“Of course, Dad, if you're not going to be serious, there's no point discussing the matter.”

Peter picked up his plate, fork and napkin, and rose.

“I shall finish my breakfast in the library,” he announced stiffly. “Augusta, will you kindly ask Ida to bring me in another cup of coffee?”

At his desk it was all he could do to cut the toast under his eggs with his shaking hands. Sell his pictures! That was what one could expect from children after supporting them in luxury all their lives, after setting up trust funds for them, after wasting precious horn's with tedious lawyers determining how to squeeze the most out of one's liquid assets for their benefit. And all the time what they wanted was simply one's lifeblood! He smote the desk with his fist. Where the hell was his coffee? He was about to yell for Ida when the door opened. But it was not Ida who brought him his cup, but Augusta herself.

"I think we're allowing ourselves to get overwrought,” she said soothingly. "Now drink your coffee while you and I discuss this matter calmly and rationally.”

“I don't want to discuss it at all!”

“I know, dear. I didn't think it was the time, either, and I tried to stop Inez. But now the fat's in the fire, we may as well get on with it.”

He stared at his impassive spouse. "Why must we discuss it at all?”

"Because despite her nastiness, there may be some sense in what Inez says. Why don't we have an appraisal made of all the art and see where we stand?”

“My accountant takes care of that. You don't have to appraise things that go to charity. They're not part of the taxable estate.”

"But, darling, you're begging the question. Let's find out just what we have before we plan what to do with it. There must be a dozen different ways of dividing your estate sensibly between your family and the museum.”

“But, Augusta,” he implored her, in despair at the prospect of losing his greatest ally, "satisfactory to whom? You seem to forget that I bought all the art I own, and most of it out of income, or capital gains, at prices that are a fraction of its present worth. If I leave the children the principal I inherited from my father, haven't I satisfied the most rigorous moral laws of family succession?”

“You seem to forget that I have a voice in this, dear. I've not been altogether a passive partner in your collecting, have I?” She paused to await the nod he could not rightfully withhold. It had been she, after all, who had pushed him into the purchase of the El Greco
Auto-da-fé,
the star of the collection. "I am sure, once we have all the facts and figures, that we'll be able to work out something not too far from what you wish to accomplish. But first I must have those facts and figures."

He ventured a sour little smile, as if he might be teasing her. "And if I refuse? It
is
my estate, after all."

“If you refuse, my dear Peter...” His now awesome spouse paused again. She did not have to blink an eye or underline a single word. She spoke with the simplicity and friendliness of one instructing a difficult child. "If you refuse and I die before you, things will come off as you wish. But if I survive you, and in that respect you must consider the difference in our ages...”

"As well as my heart and the immortality of your family!” he exclaimed, still desperately hoping to make a joke of it.

“Yes, consider by all means those things," she pursued relentlessly. “I would have a right of election, would I not? To take against your will? Isn't that how the lawyers put it?”

"Augusta, you wouldn't!” he could barely gasp.

"I can assure you, my dear, that I should exercise every legal right I had to bring about what I considered a fair and just division of your estate.”

“Do you know that Sidney Claverack suggested, when I signed my last will, that I should ask you to waive your right of election? And I refused. Refused indignantly!” Peter's voice soared to a new pitch of bitterness and self-pity. "I told him you'd never attack my will!”

"Nor would I, for my own benefit. Even if you cut me off without a penny. But I shouldn't hesitate to claim my legal share and give it to the children if I thought you had shortchanged them.”