The Lockwood Concern (34 page)

and make improvements. Or anyway changes. I don't necessarily believe they were improvements. Although you do. You are your father all over again, one generation later." "And I suppose he was his father, one generation later," he said. "Not a bit, not from everything I know," she said. "Your grandfather had to struggle. He had to live day-to-day. He didn't have much time to do anything else. But he made it possible for your father to have leisure to plan a life, a position in the community for himself and his family. And you've continued what he started. It's nothing new. I've seen it happen in the coal regions. In the coal regions there are families that are now in the third generation of money, just like yours, here in Swedish Haven. And look at Philadelphia and New England. It's nothing new. But it's new to you because you're doing it. And it's new to me because I'm playing a part in it." "Oh, really," he said. "I am. I know that. Why did you marry me instead of some Swedish Haven girl with more money? Because even though I didn't have a rich father, I was well connected. Why didn't you marry one of the Gibbsville girls? There are lots of rich girls there, and you could have married one of them. But a Gibbsville marriage didn't suit your purpose either." "I wanted to marry you, that's why," he said. "I know you did. But whoever you married, George, you were never going to marry just the girl herself. Your father didn't, and you didn't either." "Are you saying that my father didn't love my mother, and that I didn't love you?" "That isn't what I meant to say, but I guess it's what I believe. I'm not what you want." "What do I want, if you know so much?" "Oh, you want me," she said. "I'm a lady, and a very good housekeeper, and whenever you want to impress other people with the sort of wife you have, I'm satisfactory. But it's finally begun to dawn on me, George, that I was more useful than anything else." "And when did that begin to dawn on you?" he said. "When? I suppose it must have been about the same time that I began to realize that I had deceived myself about you." "How?" "Well - you were a handsome, worldly-wise man. Rather evil, I thought at first. That was because of the effect you had on me, which was to stir up emotions inside me that either I didn't know I had or else I was keeping hidden from myself. Doing what most girls do, who had the same kind of up-bringing. And so I thought of you as a rather evil young man, but evil can be attractive, because there's something warm about evil people. Warm and human. And the very nicest girls think they can turn the evil into good without sacrificing the warm and human qualities. Don't forget, my father wanted to be a missionary." "So he said." "He believed it, and so did I, about myself. But after we'd been married I began to realize that you were not evil. You were cold and calculating, but not evil. And heaven knows, I've never been right for you in certain matters. I know you'd rather not discuss that, and I don't care to either. But I expected you to make me love you the way you wanted to be loved. You knew everything and I knew nothing. You had a lot of experience and I'd had none. But you lost patience with me, and that was really how I discovered that you didn't love me. If you had loved me, we would have-" "We sleep together, and we have intercourse." "Yes, we have intercourse, but I'm not right for you. I'm there, and that's all. It's not me you want, only the place where you put yourself inside of me." "You get pleasure," he said. "Now I do. Because I learned how to. But you didn't show me. It has nothing at all to do with loving each other. And if we can't have love then, no wonder it's missing everywhere else." "Often you're the one that wants it." "Yes, nearly always. Seldom it's you. And what do you think that tells me?" "I don't know. What does it tell you?" he said. "Things that are too humiliating to put into words. I never thought it would be this way. I never thought I would be this way. I've found out how women can cheapen themselves and call it love. I never used to think it could be done without love, and finding out that it can ruined my self-respect." "I hadn't noticed that," he said. "You have a large supply of self-respect, it seems to me." "What anything seems to you, George, is only that and nothing more." " 'Quoth the raven," he said. " 'Quoth the raven," she said. The revelations in their conversation had the curious effect of making her seem, briefly, wantonly possessed, and he attacked her with a renewed vigor. But he as well as she was unaware of the rise and fall, irregularity and unpredictability of her sexual needs, and a night of unprecedented pleasure, as though between two erotically-minded strangers, was followed in the same week by a fiasco of dry pain for her and angry forced climax for him. They had talked too much without having created the tenderness that was essential to candor. Although she was a woman of spunk, who believed she was (and was) guided by a set of simple principles accumulated from her parents, Agnes was a woman whose physical resources were not equal to the demands put upon them by her spirit. She was anemic. The blood that came out of her at menstruation was watery, and she was frequently constipated, a condition that was aggravated by hard and difficult bowel movements. She was not one to go to a doctor for relief from minor pains and aches, and during her life in Swedish Haven she acquired no confidante among the town women. Her position - or more precisely, the position of her husband - made it unthinkable to reveal to another woman the kind of intimate details that the other women shared among themselves. For lack of opportunity the other women were unable to offer the confidences that would invite an exchange on her part. Invitations of any kind were seldom issued by Agnes. On rare occasions they attended the more important social functions in Gibbsville - the Assemblies, wedding receptions, the garden parties in the spring of the year - at which the people of substance felt obliged to appear. But private dinner parties in private houses were infrequent in Gibbsville and almost unheard of in Swedish Haven. In both towns women saw the inside of other women's houses only at whist and "500" parties in the afternoon. Casual conversations were conducted in the grocery stores and meat markets, but they were likely to be interspersed with the clerks' recommendations of some nice eggplant or spring lamb. The fashionable Gibbsville women would also meet at the women's shops and milliners', but Agnes employed a dressmaker, who came to her house two or three times a year with patterns and materials. Mrs. Colby would make the trip by train from Wilkes-Barre and stay two or three days, occupying the spare room on the second floor back. She had news and gossip of Wilkes-Barre and Scranton, but as the persons involved were hardly more than familiar names from Agnes's girlhood, her visits were professional and industrious. Wherever she went in the two towns Agnes was recognized and treated with the right degree of cordiality or obsequiousness, which was determined by the nature of her husband's relationship with the other husbands rather than by her own personality. In all her years in Swedish Haven that was to be the case; she was always the wife of George Lockwood, so much so that in the two towns there were not a dozen women and not a man who called her by her first name. She had a large, well-staffed house to live in and a splendid pair of bobtailed cobs to take her wherever she wanted to go, a Hudson seal coat with hat and muff to match to keep her warm, and people got out of her way when she entered a store. But when she died there was not much that could be said about her, and nothing much was said. Even her daughter Ernestine was so repressed by the absence of grief at the funeral that her own grief became a formal, tearless performance. The distress that other mourners saw in her face was in truth anxiety for her brother, who had not answered her telegram informing him of their mother's death. When the last visitors had rushed away from the formalities Ernestine said to her father, "I'm worried about Bing. I can't understand not hearing from him." "The last straw," said her father. "The last straw." She saw then that her father too had his substitute for grief, and it made her understand him - and herself - a little better.

BOOK 2

George Lockwood's first impulse was to refuse - politely, of course - to see the young man from St. Bartholomew's. It could be done reasonably, properly, legitimately. He could say he had just finished his new house and was not yet settled in; he could plead the pressure of a new business venture (without revealing that it was to be in the confectionery line, a vaguely undignified enterprise); or he could invent an excuse. George knew full well that the only reason the young man wanted to call on him was to ask for a large sum of money for the old school. Penrose Lockwood had received an identically worded letter from the young man, whose name was Preston Hibbard, St. Bartholomew's '17, Harvard '21, M. B. A. Harvard '23. The class identifications followed Hibbard's name in the Alumni Directory, where he was listed as Acting Bursar. At St. Bartholomew's the young man had been a classmate of Bing Lockwood's, but George Lockwood had never heard Bing speak of him. The Alumni Directory listed eleven Hibbards through the years, all from Eastern Massachusetts. "Did you get a letter from somebody named Hibbard at St. Bartholomew's?" said George to his brother. "Yes, he wanted to come and see me," said Pen. "You know what it's about, don't you?" "Money, I imagine," said George. "Money, and lots of it," said Pen. "Murray Dickinson told me they're sending this guy around first to, uh, reconnoiter. Find out how much the traffic will bear before they announce the drive." "He picked the wrong time for me," said George. "My spare cash is in the candy business." "You have to see him," said Pen. "He's going to call on every living alumnus. I don't know the kid, but his father was there when I was. John Hibbard. Boston banker. The Hibbards could write a cheque for the whole amount if they wanted to. They've had money since it was called wampum. Somerset Club. Wharf Rats. A hundred percent Porcellian all the way down the line. You might as well see the kid and get it over with, because those people don't take no for an answer." "What are you giving?" said George. "Oh, you know how those things are. You both feel around and somehow or other you find out what they have you down for, and then you cut it in half and you arrive at a sum. I'm seeing him a week from Tuesday, taking him to lunch, as a matter of fact." "Then I guess there's no use stalling him off," said George. "No, there's no use stalling him off, Compared to the Hibbard family the Lockwoods are rank amateurs when it comes to money." "What does St. Bartholomew's want the money for?" said George. "Oh, somebody just gave a lot of money to Groton, and our trustees see their chance. Pride in the old school. We'll show those God damn Grotties," said Pen. Young Mr. Preston Hibbard arrived in Swedish Haven in a black Dodge coupe with disc wheels, except for the Massachusetts license plates a car that was indistinguishable from six doctors' coupes that at that very moment were likely to be parked at any hospital. With a green felt bag hanging from a cord in one hand and wearing a very old brown fedora that sat on the top of his head, Hibbard was being turned away by the uniformed Lockwood maid when George intervened. "You're very punctual," said George. "Half past twelve just struck. Come in. Would you like to wash, and what can I offer you to drink?" "I'll have whiskey and water, or a cocktail, if I may," said Hibbard. "And yes, I'd like to use the Peter." He employed the St. Bartholomew's nickname for the toilet. He came back from the lavatory rubbing his fingers together. "You're the fourth St. Bartholomew's Lockwood I've had the pleasure of seeing in the last five weeks." "The fourth? I knew you were seeing my brother." "Yes, I had lunch with Mr. Penrose Lockwood last week. He took me to the Recess Club. The day after that I saw Mr. Francis Lockwood, who I believe is no relation." "No relation. In fact, I've never met him. He came after my brother and I. Lives in Chicago?" "Lake Forest, near Chicago," said Hibbard. "And who was the fourth of this distinguished name?" "None other than my old friend and classmate, your son Bing. I stayed with him and his wife overnight when I was in California. They have a very comfortable place, a ranch I suppose you call it. Bing was in great shape. I shouldn't be surprised if he turns out to be the outstanding man in our class." "You don't say?" said George. "All the signs and portents. I spoke to fifteen of the nineteen St. Bartholomew's boys that live in California, and every single one of them seemed to go out of his way to say something complimentary about Bing. The coming man in California." "That's good to hear," said George. "I'm not going to pretend that I'm not aware of some differences you and he have had, but I thought you'd be pleased to know he's doing so well. Financially, of course, he's doing very well." "May I ask what he gave you?" "Well. it will come out eventually. He pledged fifty thousand dollars." "Fifty thousand? Oh, but you say pledged," said George. "Yes, but half of it right away, and the other twenty-five thousand will be announced next Commencement. There's no question about his having it to give. I understand he's giving the same amount to Princeton." "To Princeton?" "Giving it, or has given it already." "You're full of news, Mr. Hibbard. Tell me some more." "Be glad to tell you anything I know. I gather that Bing went out there and went right to work for this man King and made a distinctly good impression from the start. Wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty, they said. Well, they're covered with liquid black gold now, metaphorically speaking. King had a son, a friend of Bing's, who was killed in an airplane accident, flying his own plane, and after that Mr. King treated Bing as if he were his own father." "Hardly that," said George. "Well, that isn't quite what I meant to say, under the circumstances, but in a manner of speaking," said Hibbard. "Do you realize that those people out there have oil derricks out in the ocean? That's the new thing out there. I've seen them. Perfectly amazing to see one of those towers a hundred yards offshore, with the thing pumping up and down. They don't miss a trick, those people." "So my son has made his pile before he's thirty. Good for him," said George. "With some help from you, I gather." "No, the money he had to invest came from his grandfather. My father. I can tell you neither one of us would have put a penny in oil wells. I still wouldn't." "Well, I have. On Bing's recommendation I've bought some San Marco stock. For myself, not for St. Bartholomew's. Our friends at St. Mark's School would be amused by that. San Marco's, St." "I got it almost immediately," said George. "From what you've told me, though, my son is giving you cash and not stock. The school, that is." "Oh, yes indeed. He made me promise not to invest any of the school money in San Marco stock. It's very risky at the moment, he said, because they're prospecting elsewhere. He didn't say where, but he said the whole thing could blow right up in their faces." "But you put some of your own money in it." "Yes, after I caught some of Bing's enthusiasm. I'm not in for a great deal, but these things pay off when they pay off, as witness the money Bing has made. You ought to see him, with hobnail boots and a Stetson hat, an old corduroy coat, driving around in a Rolls-Royce." "A what?" "He has a grey Rolls-Royce touring car that I don't suppose has been washed since he bought it. On the floor in the back are all kinds of tools and metal tubes containing blueprints and so forth. I asked him, why a Rolls instead of a tin lizzie, and his answer was so typical of those people. He wanted a car that he could fill with gas and oil and drive hell out of it without stopping for little things like a broken radius rod. When it wears out he plans to push it over a cliff and get a new one. I don't know how long it's been since you last saw Bing, but he's nothing like the Princeton snake in the Norfolk suit that I remembered. Still plays tennis, he and his wife. She's pretty good, too. I guess they all are, in California. They have a court made of some composition, much faster than anything I'd ever played on. She beat me, as a matter of fact. We played one set of singles and she took me 9-7, or 8-6. Ran me ragged, and I've never been beaten by a girl before that didn't have a national ranking." "I take it you liked her." "Very much. There's no horse-shit about her. That may seem a strange thing to say about a girl, a young woman, but it's what came to mind. I don't mean that she isn't a lady, or unfeminine. Nor is she like the girls that I grew up with, who play pretty good tennis and can handle small boats. It begins I guess with the way she speaks. A low voice, and a Western accent that makes her chew her r's. She says core instead of car, dawler instead of dollar. And that accent is more masculine than feminine. But for instance when we played tennis, she was wearing a pair of blue jeans, Levis, and high-heeled boots. She just kicked off the boots and put on a pair of sneakers and was ready to play. She shot a snake while I was there. Just went in the house and got a big revolver and came out and killed this rattlesnake that I hadn't even seen, hiding in the bushes near the tennis court. She said they were entitled to roam around in the hills; but they had to stay off her property, on account of the children. She asked me not to tell Bing she'd killed a rattler, because he'd get a gun and go around looking for the mate and probably be shooting snakes till it was time for dinner." "Did you see the children?" "Oh, my yes. Stevie, named after Mr. King's son, and Agnes. The boy is about four, and the little girl is two. The little boy never says a word, just looks at you. And of course the little girl hasn't really learned to talk yet. There must be something to that climate. I have nieces and nephews the same age, and my young relatives don't seem nearly as robust. Bing and Rita aren't particularly gigantic, and I've met you and Mr. Penrose Lockwood and the late Mrs. Lockwood, Bing's mother. And I also saw briefly Rita's father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. Collins?" "Collier." "Thank you. But Bing's children are Mennen's Food babies. The boy is a towhead, and has a permanent tan, I guess. The little girl toddles around all over the place, which is why Rita is so vigilant about snakes, she told me. Personally, I wouldn't live there for anything, but I refuse to go to Squam Lake because they have rattlesnakes in New Hampshire." They had proceeded from cocktails through the meat course, and the entree dishes were being taken away. "Excellent chops, Mr. Lockwood." "Could you eat another? Only take a few minutes." "I could, but I have to drive to Scranton this afternoon." "Bob Mackie and Bayard Donaldson?" "Yes. I've been warned not to expect much from Bayard Donaldson." "I suppose not. The miners are out on strike. That may affect Bob Mackie's generosity, too," said George. "Well, yes. But Mr. Mackie I believe has other irons in the fire, too." "You really do your homework, don't you?" "Oh, yes. There are only about seven hundred alumni, you know. Six hundred and eighty-eight, to be exact." "And you're calling on every one of them?" "Not every single one, separately. Some of the older men can't have visitors, and there are a few eccentrics who wax indignant if they're asked for money. We stay away from them. In the Boston and New York area, where most of our people are concentrated, we have small luncheons, especially for the alumni that haven't been out of college very long. But I expect to have seen, individually, close to four hundred men by the time I get through. It's been a very interesting experience, and I've learned a lot about the country, driving around." "You drive? Did you drive to California?" "And back. We have two alumni in Arizona, who I found out don't speak to each other. And two in Colorado. Denver and Colorado Springs. So I went out the Southern route and came back the Northern." " How much have you got me down for?" said George. "I of course know what my brother has in mind. Don't count on me for that much." "No? Then you're not going to come anywhere near Bing's pledge?" "I'm afraid not, Mr. Hibbard. He has a son that in ten years will be ready to enter St. Bartholomew's. That problem is over, for me." "Well, there's the question of your daughter, for instance. When she gets married, she may want to have her sons go to the old school. She may even marry a St. Bartholomew's boy." "She may. She may also marry an Old Etonian or an unfrocked priest. I haven't considered her offspring." "Well, could I put you down - tentatively - for twenty thousand?" "You may put me down, finally, for ten thousand. Frankly, I don't see the necessity for this campaign. I've been told that it all started because some old Grottie gave his school a big fat sum, and our people are copycatting." "That is true, as far as it goes, Mr. Lockwood. It's contagious. And a lot of our alumni say we don't need any more money, and that is not true. Costs are going up. For instance, it costs just three times as much to feed a boy as it did when you were there. And we've had to start paying our teachers decent salaries. We can't count on getting teachers who have independent incomes. For our best men we often have to compete with the universities, because of tenure and the prestige involved. We lost, as you know, two of our old reliables, one by death and one by retirement. Judson Heminway died last summer, and we had to look around for a new head of the mathematics department. We got a good one, but he didn't come cheaply. Man named Vollmer, from Penn Charter, in Philadelphia. We had to pay through the nose, because we were counting on Heminway to last at least another five years. In the case of old Socrates Barbour, he was due for retirement, so we were prepared for that. Excuse me just a moment, please." He got up from the table and picked up his green felt bag, which was lying on the sideboard. "Why don't we move to my study and have our coffee in there?" said George. "Unless you'd like some more lemon meringue." "That's a good idea. Moving to the study, not the lemon meringue. I've put on twelve pounds on this trip. I must say the old boys are hospitable. They must remember the rather Spartan diet we have at school, and I like to eat." They moved to the study. "See you've got your old diploma on display," said Hibbard. "Lost mine in a fire two years ago." "At school?" "No, I had it in a little flat I keep in Boston. Bachelor digs on Chestnut Street." "You're not married?" "No self-respecting young lady would have me," said Hibbard. "That's one way of putting it," said George Lockwood. "I suspect that you're still enjoying your freedom." "Well, that too. Belonging to the administrative staff, I'm not required to stay at school weekends, so I'm in