The Plot (5 page)

Louis heard Ethel's voice vaguely. “Yes, I just had kind of an idea.”

“You writers! You writers!”

And yet, although you wanted to warn the old woman, you were, in a way, glad you couldn't warn her because you identified with the killer, also. He was poor and hunted. You identified with him because the old woman certainly was asking for it, setting herself up as a clay pigeon, refusing to accept honest warnings about him. You identified because you saw Robert Montgomery sociologically, let's say, as a product of our culture. You saw him as never having had a penny, as going hungry often because his old man had been a drunk. You saw him as having been unable to get schooling, fun, opportunities. Louis pulled himself short because—
was
all that from
Night Must Fall?
Had Robert Montgomery in the movie shown himself to be this kind of young man? Wasn't Louis identifying himself with Robert Montgomery and then handing over his own past to Montgomery as a reason for, a vindication of, murder?

“Can't you tell me what you were thinking about, Louis?”

“I was thinking about an old movie,
Night Must Fall
.”

She bent her head away from him. “Under the circumstances, that's a very peculiar association for you to have just now. I saw the picture, Louis. I know how the old woman was all alone, how the young man came there——”

Louis laughed.

“Come on, you don't think I'm a murderer, do you, Ethel?”

“Maum Cloe, Jamey and his Oedipus——After all, what do I know about you?”

“That I can write.” He grinned. “Do you think I could murder anyone?”

“I don't know.”

He pushed his sleeve up on his arm and waved his arm at Ethel. “Nothing up my sleeve, you see; no head in no hatbox!”

“No.”

“But maybe you better not give me the green light, after all.”

She thrust her pole into the water so fiercely that the punt jerked. “Maybe I shouldn't, but I will. Why? Because you're even better-looking than Robert Montgomery, Louis, much better-looking.” She caught his look of distaste and swallowed her anger at it, smiling, shaking her head, laying her hand on him maternally. “I'm only teasing you, Louis.”

“Sure.”

“You're angry, Louis. Please don't be angry with me. I want you to stay awhile because, no matter what he says, it's dull here for Jamey with only me.” Poor old me. Poor old Ethel. “And if he weren't so bored he wouldn't need to pick on me all the time.”

“Poor Ethel.”

“And you'll take my advice?”

This was maternal again, this complicity, for he and his mother had had to be allied against his father. “Sure. I'll take your advice. Let me give you a hand,” he said, steadying the punt as it grazed the little dock.

She noticed that he was acting as if she were fragile and incompetent, but she didn't correct his error.

CHAPTER THREE

Supper was served in the dining room, in the same alcove made by the great curved window, but the table was several leaves smaller and the setting less formal, with tall candles in crystal and silver hurricane lamps. The meal was very light when contrasted with the three-o'clock dinner. “This is she-crab soup,” Jamey said. He took some up in his spoon and held it near his nose, sniffing with relish. “It is a secret receipt of the well-known Charleston Rhett family, Louis. I will not tell you how we acquired the receipt, dear boy; if you are intensely moral it might spoil your enjoyment, although piracy is quite in the Charleston tradition. Are you intensely moral, dear boy?”

“Moral? I don't know.” Ethel was staring at him. He had promised her to wait until she gave him the green light, the go ahead, the O.K. Go ahead where? O.K. to what? “No,” he said, slowly, “I am not intensely moral.” Was this giving Ethel her green light? She smiled; she bent to her soup; she looked as if it were. Nonsense. Crap.

“Good. Eat slowly.” Jamey let the soup drop back into his bowl. “This is practically our whole supper. At nine we will have sandwiches and fruit, and I will have the one highball my doctor permits me. Do you drink, dear boy?”

Ethel, still smiling, said, “He drinks beer, Jamey.”

“Beer? A pity.”

“A necessity,” Louis corrected. “I drink anything, where there is anything to drink.”

“You sound as if all you had ever been offered was gall and wormwood. Don't be so bitter, dear boy! Well, I will offer you a highball, then, but I will not offer Ethel one. Alcohol does not suit Ethel. It turns her nose red and her heart sentimental.”

Ethel stopped smiling. Her nose was not red now, the tip of it had turned quite white, but she took it in silence. Poor Ethel. Suddenly, Louis wished that his mother could see the table, could sit at the table, could eat——His throat closed up. Then it seemed to Louis that the whole large room was filled with the noise he made spooning his soup. It seemed to him that off in the shadows, near the serving table, waiting next to the tureen in case anyone wished to be helped again, William Reas was deploring the vulgar noise Louis made. But that was crap, too; William Reas wasn't interested in Louis' table manners. William Reas was real, even if he wasn't allowed to act real. He would be interested in a tip, if Louis could give him one, or a kind word, if Louis could produce one. (The silence was appalling.) What did William Reas care if Louis ate his soup with his feet?

Louis was quite mistaken. It was an error for Louis to make Wiliam Reas a symbol of the downtrodden Southern Negro, the heir of ignorance, slavery, and poverty. William Reas was more than that. William Reas was a man who was completely dominated by his fear of his mother, who had deserted his wife and stolen his son from her and brought that son to his mother. William Reas was his mother's slave, and he would do as she told him to, do whatever she told him to. It was a dangerous mistake Louis made.

After supper, they went to the drawing room, and Jamey seated himself, as carefully as if he were made of glass, on a foam-rubber chaise longue similar to the one in his study. “A cigarette, Ethel, then the Bach
St. Matthew
, the
Love for Three Oranges
, and I think, I think, the Afro-Caribbean album. An hour of music, dear boy.” Ethel brought a teakwood box inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Jamey chose a cigarette, holding it to his nose, rubbing it between his fingers to test its freshness. While Ethel patiently waited with the lighter, he inserted the cigarette into a gold holder. Ethel then disappeared into what looked like a closet, arranged the records in order, and started the machine.

The first Bach chords commanded the air. Jamey closed his eyes and sighed with pleasure. Louis stared at the old man lounging on the long chair. He was wearing pale-blue slacks of the finest, most supple suède possible, and a darker blue cashmere sweater over an open-necked white shirt. On his small feet were black patent-leather pumps, and occasionally, in time to the Bach, the toe of his left shoe moved up and down, otherwise he was quite inert. Louis did not hear the music, so it could not penetrate and soothe his savage breast; he was intent on the ugly, wizened, old body in the beautiful clothes, intent on this perfect room, the yielding rubber under the old man, his indolence. (He thought of his mother's thin, lumpy mattress, her pain.) He saw the magnificent Utrillo on the far wall that, even in this candlelit dimness, spread into the perfect room the sunshine the old man loved, and remembered his mother's dark bedroom, and that she loved sunshine, too. He was aware of his anger and thought that he would certainly miss Ethel's green light because he was seeing red, red, red.

At nine the concert was over. Jamey sighed and sat up. Ethel rose and brought the covered silver platter of sandwiches, first to Jamey, then to Louis. “Russian sandwiches tonight, Louis. Another Charleston note. You will enjoy them.” He waved at the great crystal bowl heaped with fruit. “It is enough for me to look at that exquisite still-life—Maum Cloe is an artist, don't you think?—but you and Ethel, being more gross in your appetites, may follow your sandwiches with some fruit. Ethel and I will have our game of chess now.” Munching a sandwich, he walked to the small table on which the ivory chessmen had already been set up.

Ethel stuffed the rest of the sandwich into her mouth and chewed frantically. “Should Mr. Daignot take advantage of your library while we have our game, Jamey?” She waved at the bookshelves lining the long wall.

“Splendid notion. Your first move tonight, Ethel, and do pay attention. It is not enjoyable to beat you too easily.”

“Yes, Jamey.” As she passed Louis, she whispered, “While we're playing, read something aloud.”

“Ethel!”

“I was suggesting Proust, Jamey.”

Jamey said Proust was an able suggestion. He rubbed his palms up and down the front of the blue cashmere sweater, then rubbed them together. His circulation was bad.

This was obviously Ethel's signal. Louis walked to the bookshelves so that he could turn his back on Ethel and her signal, so he could consider——To be able to buy any book you wanted, Louis thought, running his finger along a row of them. To be able to have them rebound so that the outside was as good as the inside. Not to read a review and have your mouth go dry with longing to read a book; not to go to the Public Library and try to convince the librarian that someone besides yourself would want to read that particular book, if they should buy it. Louis found the red levant volumes of Proust and pulled out
Swann's Way
. The volume fell open at the Verdurin scene, so he knew Jamey must enjoy the Verdurin scene; well, so did he. Louis did not know why the beautiful book, the fine, clear print settled his mind, but it did. He went back to his seat and opened
Swann's Way
. His heart made a buzzing in his ears.

Except for the click of the ivory chessmen when they were moved off the board, the room was perfectly still. Outside, the wind, playing through the moss-hung live oaks, made accompaniment to the birds' voices; from the old rice marshes, the frogs played basso.

Louis cleared his throat. “This is good! Boy, this is good!”

Ignoring Jamey's frown at this interruption, Ethel said, “What's so good? May he read it aloud, Jamey?”

“I suppose so. Yes, read it, dear boy.”

“It's so damn good! Here goes.” His voice was verile but controlled, full and deep.

Jamey took Ethel's queen and held it in the air, turning the piece around critically. “What a reading voice, eh, Ethel? Is that what you wanted me to hear? Ah, she knows my little weakness, she knows my little weakness!”

“A person doesn't have to be very bright, Jamey, to know that her voice irritates you.”

“
Hélas!
Except for her voice, Ethel is perfection. It isn't her fault that she was born a high-pitched female, and a New England female at that. From twelve to three, daily, Ethel reads aloud to me, you know. Or didn't you know? Is this Ethel's idea, dear boy?”

“I don't know what idea, so I don't——”

“The idea, dear boy, is that you stay on for a bit as my reader.”

Ethel said quickly, “Jamey's eyes—it would be doing him a favor, Louis.” She turned to Jamey. “I don't want him to think he would be taking charity; it really would be a favor to you.”

“Indeed it would, dear boy. You would rest my eyes in more senses than one.” He giggled.

Ethel shrugged. “Oh, Jamey!”

“Dear girl, this was very clever of you, very clever indeed, but I don't like you to think that it is necessary to pull the wool over Jamey's eyes to rest them!”

“Who could do that, Jamey?” Dead-pan.

“Ah, who? Well, Louis?”

Louis said nothing, considering. Considering whether he should “stay on for a bit” and pay his way by reading aloud to the old man. Why not? Why in hell not? Maybe it was the only way to get that interview, that five hundred bucks. Ethel should know; this was her green light, wasn't it?

Jamey did not like Louis' hesitation. “Don't you find it comfortable here?”

“It's very comfortable here, but—” Why not? Why not?

“But me no buts, dear boy! You can read to Jamey and learn from Jamey. You have a lot to learn from Jamey, dear boy.”

“You have a lot to learn about me. As I pointed out to Ethel, for all you know I have a head in a hatbox.”

“A what in a hatbox?”

Ethel was glaring, blushing her high, angry blush. “Jamey doesn't go to the movies, Louis.

“Then I'll explain: I was referring to a movie called
Night Must Fall
. It is about a murderer who takes advantage of an invitation to stay with a rich, unprotected old lady.”

“Dear, dear, are you issuing a warning, dear boy?”

Louis grinned. “This place has been lousy with warnings, hasn't it?”

“Um. Answer me this, Louis, does the murderer in your movie read aloud to his old lady?”

“No, he doesn't read.”

“An illiterate?” Jamey rolled the triumphant glance that preceded all the things he said that he believed particularly fortuitous. “Ah, I would know better than to invite an illiterate into my parlor, dear boy, for then I would indeed be a helpless old man in a lonely, unguarded house and entirely at his mercy; but you are a reader, dear boy!”

“And because I read, I'm O.K.?”

“Precisely. Because you have read my works, I am safe with you. Maum Cloe, being illiterate herself, doesn't understand that no literate person would ever harm Jamey Vaughn. My pen is mightier than the sword.” He raised his head high.

Just like that: my pen is mightier than the sword. Louis saw the thin corded neck under the raised head and remembered Dame May Whitty's neck when Robert Montgomery put her pearls around it for her. He had stood in back of her, both of them facing a mirror; as he fastened the pearls, he had tickled her obscenely, so that she giggled, gasped, shook—and shivers went down the watcher's spine. Why the devil did he keep bringing up that old movie? Louis thought: I came here to get that interview; I'm not going to murder him. I came here for a dollars-and-cents reason, and that's that. Louis felt Ethel's stare and returned it; then, at the same moment, each turned away. In the silence, Jamey rose and poured a drink for Louis from the decanter. He squished Vichy into it, squinting carefully at the color of the mixture. Holding the glass in the air before him, he handed it to Louis, bowing theatrically.