Дональд Джеймс - The House of Eros

Cy Stevenson, in his early-forties now, was still slender enough to boast the easy movements of a young man. He wore pale chalk corduroy slacks and a well-cut, dark green, almost black, blazer with black English regimental buttons. Buttons of the English regiment, he related, which had been first raised in America as the 62nd Royal Americans, and was now, in the modern British Army, called the Greenjackets. His English grandfather, Cy now regularly told enquirers, had served with the Greenjackets in the First World War.

His brushed pale blond hair gave him the look associated with an older man, the impression of solid decisions judiciously taken. But his easy, even toothed smile was contrastingly boyish. When he had married into Meyerick County, club members had found in him just the balance of qualities that appealed to them. Within five or six years he had been elected president of the club committee.

As Cy climbed from his car, Anita Simpson, emerging from the back of her Rolls Bentley, waved to him across two or three glistening car tops. ‘Cy,’ she said, ‘Cy darling. We don’t usually meet you here on Fridays. Are you changing old habits?’ She was walking between the cars towards him. ‘Or starting on some new ones? I’d say that it was high time you did…

She leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek. Anita Simpson, a widow of one year’s standing, was not the only club woman of mature years who found Cy Stevenson’s apparent faithfulness to his wife, Sunny, an exciting challenge. Two years into his presidency and he could have slept with a dozen or more women at the club, but he politely diverted every approach. Those women who discussed the problem openly decided he had a dragon mistress in New York. It was the only answer.

There was another. And that was that Cy’s loins were not much stirred by big Caucasian women. His wife, Sunny, tall, shapely, by any normal standards a very attractive woman, in fact left him cold. His preference was, and always had been since his days in the orient, for the slender olive-skinned girls of Saigon.

He had not found it difficult to arrive at a solution to his problem. With Sunny he played games. Maybe she saw through them, maybe not. But he made an effort to seem a considerate, passionate husband.

His real passions were satisfied elsewhere. Sunny’s family wealth made it unnecessary for him to earn. Instead, with her initial support, he had devoted his time to the Meyerick Fund, a local Vietnamese charity, headless since the death of its founder, a local philanthropist named Philip Rose. The work of fundraising was varied and challenging; more important, the opportunities to meet young Vietnamese women in New York were frequent and satisfying.

‘No change of habits,’ Cy said to Anita as they crossed the parking lot. ‘We have a fund meeting tonight. Third Friday in the month.’

She slipped an arm into his. ‘Do you have time to have a drink with me before your meeting?’

‘Of course.’

Over Spritzers on the terrace, Anita acknowledged friends and rivals and listened impatiently as Cy talked about the Meyerick Fund. ‘No,’ Cy said ruminatively, ‘when I took on the Fund after Philip Rose died there were just 300 contributors. Most of them members of this club. No criticism of Philip Rose, he was a great guy, a visionary I guess is the way you’d describe him. He knew the fund could be big. But didn’t really understand modern communications.’

God, Anita Simpson was thinking to herself, if only I could turn this man’s attention away from his boat people. She knew instinctively that he wasn’t a saint. She recognised too many of the signs. But he had never, never once offered her the slightest encouragement.

She allowed herself a few minutes of erotic fantasy as he talked about the Fund’s attempt to help boat people settle in the States. Then seeing her friend and rival Marsha Knox stop in the doorway to the clubroom she pulled herself up short. Marsha knew all too well the way Anita’s thoughts ran when Cy was around. The two women had talked about it often enough and in erotic details over late afternoon gin and tonics. Now when Marsha waved, in an attempt to get called over to the table Anita turned away.

‘Hell, I’ve had enough of being health-conscious.’ Cy Stevenson looked down at his half-finished Spritzer. ‘Just time for something more substantial. Join me?’

She smiled a refusal. With a brief kiss on his cheek, Anita wandered away between tables. Cy checked his watch. He could use a drink. A real one. He had been a fool wasting time on a glass of watered wine, trying pointlessly to impress with his moderation.

He walked across to the bar and greeted the bar manager in a loud voice. ‘No problems, Vic? All running smoothly?’

‘A drink, Mr Stevenson?’

‘Just while we’re talking. That new wine merchant is working out OK, then?’

They had said all this before. The manager handed almost two inches of Glenmorangie to Stevenson. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I think we made a good move there, Mr Stevenson. I’m very pleased with their range of Burgundies.’

‘Good, good.’ Cy gulped the whisky in two swallows and was already turning away. ‘Great.’

As if by sleight of hand the glass had already disappeared from the bar top. Vic Impari knew his job.

Cy Stevenson climbed the stone spiral staircase of the tourette, the only remaining section of the original Victorian building. After the disastrous fire of 1947 the new clubhouse had been built to adjoin it. He stopped at the first row of Gothic windows, taking in the view across the tennis courts.

Someone was coming up the spiral staircase behind him. He turned. The Reverend Hector Hand smiled much of the time. But his tensions were apparent to anybody who had known him for five minutes. He hated youth and he hated Communists. He affected to find both groups behind any disturbance of the American way of life. But he had served three spells as a professional soldier in Vietnam.

‘Hello there, Cy,’ he said to the waiting Stevenson. ‘I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. You have a great club here. Quiet, orderly, everybody taking their modest pleasures in a good old-fashioned American way.’ Did he know? Did he really know what some of the membership got up to, Cy wondered briefly before he dismissed the idea. No, the Reverend Hector Hand of the 22nd Church of Christ the Lord was not sending anyone up. The 22nd? Stevenson had asked once and found that apparently you could count established Christian churches this way from St Peter on. If you chose.

They walked together up the last twenty steps and reached a landing with a large dark arched oak door before them. Stevenson opened it, standing aside for the Reverend Hand, and then followed in himself.

There were five men and two women round an oval conference table in the middle of a light, sunny stone-built room. Portraits of distinguished club members hung on the walls. A gigantic view of the old clubhouse, before the fire of 1947, had been temporarily removed from the wide chimney breast above the stone fire surround. In its place, for the duration of the committee meeting as tradition demanded, a large portrait of the founder of the Meyerick Vietnam Fund, Philip John Rose, had been hung. It showed a formidably stern, confident face which might have been painted closer to the beginning of the twentieth century rather than towards the end.

‘Good morning, good morning,’ Cy Stevenson said and the Reverend Hand echoed. He shook hands with the first two men, Oliver Digweed and Colonel George Savary, and rounded the table to kiss the two women. The first, thin angular Helen Rose, the founder’s widow; then adding a quick hug for Mary Page Butler, his wife’s sister, before passing on to shake the hands of the two brothers, Gus and Arne Anderson, blond Scandinavian types, owners of a series of swimming pool installation companies throughout Meyerick County and beyond. Both had served with the Marines in Vietnam.