Irwin Shaw - Rich Man, Poor Man

Of course she wasn’t going to go to the house on the river. Let the food go cold, let the wine go unpoured, let the suitors

languish by the side of the river. Unknown to them, their lady is near, playing her single, teasing game. She wanted to laugh, but would not break the wilderness silence.

It would be delicious to push the game further. To go halfway down the gravel road between the stands of second-growth birch, white pencils in the woodshade. Go halfway and then return, in inner mirth. Or better still, weave through the forest, in and out of the shadows, Iroquois maiden, silent on her stockinged feet over last year’s leaves, down to the river, and there, from the protection of the trees, spy out, Intelligence agent in the service of all virgins, and watch the two men, their lusty plans prepared, sitting waiting on the porch. And then steal back, her crisp dress flicked with bark and sticky buds, safe, safe, after the edge of danger, but feeling her power.

She stood up and crossed the highway towards the leafy entrance of the gravel-top road. She heard a car coming fast, from the south. She turned and stood there, as though she was waiting for a bus to take her in the direction of Port Philip. It wouldn’t do to be seen plunging into the woods. Secrecy was all.

The car swept toward her, on the far side of the road. It slowed, came to a halt opposite her. She did not look at it, but kept searching for the bus she knew wouldn’t appear for another half hour.,

‘Hello, Miss Jordache.’ She had been named, in a man’s voice. She could feel the blush rising furiously to her cheeks as she turned her head. She knew it was silly to blush. She had every right to be on the road. No one knew of the two black soldiers waiting with their food and liquor and their eight hundred dollars. For a moment she didn’t recognise the man who had spoken, sitting alone at the wheel of a 1939 Buick convertible, with the top down. He was smiling at her, one hand, in a driving glove, hanging over the door of the car on her side. Then she saw who it was. Mr Boylan. She had only seen him once or twice in her life, around the plant which bore his family’s name. He was rarely there, a slender, blond, tanned, cleanly shaven man, with bristly blond eyebrows and highly polished shoes.

‘Good afternoon, Mr Boylan,’ she said, not moving. She didn’t want to get close enough for him to be able to notice her blush.

‘What in the world are you doing all the way up here?’ Privilege, his voice suggested. He sounded as though this unexpected discovery, the pretty girl alone in her high heels at the

edge of the woods, amused him.

‘It was such a lovely day.’ She almost stammered. ‘I often go on little expeditions when I have an afternoon off.’

‘All alone?” He sounded incredulous.

‘I’m a nature lover,’ she said lamely. What a clod he must think I am, she thought. She caught him smiling as he looked down at her high-heeled shoes. ‘I just took the bus on the spur of the moment,’ she said, inventing, without hope. ‘I’m waiting for the bus back to town.’ She heard a rustle behind her and tnmed, panic-stricken, sure that it must be the two soldiers, growing impatient and come to see if she had arrived. But it was only a squirrel, racing across the gravel of the side road.

“What’s the matter?’ Boylan asked, puzzled by her spasmodic movement.

‘I thought I heard a snake.’ Oh, goodbye, she thought.

“You’re pretty jittery,’ Boylan said gravely, ‘for a nature lover.’

‘Only snakes,’ she said. It was the stupidest conversation she bad ever had in her life.

Boylan looked at his watch. ‘You know, the bus won’t be along for quite some time,’ he said.

‘That’s all right,’ she said, smiling widely, as though waiting for buses in the middle of nowhere was her favourite Saturday afternoon occupation. ‘It’s so nice and peaceful here.’

‘Let me ask you a serious question,’ he said.

Here it comes, she thought. He’s going to want to know who I’m waiting for. She fumbled for a serviceable short list. Her brother, a girl friend, a nurse from the hospital. She was so busy thinking, she didn’t hear what he said, although she knew be had said something.

I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I missed that.’

‘I said, have you had lunch yet, Miss Jordache?’

‘I’m not really hungry, really. I…’

‘Come.’ He gestured to her with a closed hand. ‘I’ll buy you lunch. I despise lunching alone.’

Obediently, feeling small and childish, under adult orders, she crossed the road behind the Buick and stepped into the car, as he leaned over from his side to open the door for her. The only other person she had ever heard use the word ‘despise’ in normal conversation was her mother. Shades of Sister Catherine, Old Teacher. ‘It’s very kind of you, Mr Boylan,’ she said.

I’m lucky on Saturdays,’ he said as he started the car

She had no notion of what he meant by that. If he hadn’t been

her boss, in a manner of speaking, and old besides, forty, forty-five at least, she would have somehow managed to refuse. She regretted the secret excursion through the woods that now would never take place, the obscene, tantalising possibility that perhaps the two soldiers would have glimpsed her, pursued her… Limping braves on tribal hunting grounds. Eight hundred dollars’ worth of war paint

‘Do you know a place called The Farmer’s Inn?’ Boylan asked as he started the car.

‘I’ve heard of it,’ she said. It was a small hotel on a bluff above the river about fifteen miles farther on and supposed to be very expensive.

‘It’s not a bad little joint,’ Boylan said. ‘You can get a decent bottle of wine.’

There was no more conversation because he drove very fast and the wind roared across the open car, making her squint against the pressure on her eyes and swirling her hair. The wartime speed limit was supposed to be only thirty-five miles an hour, to conserve gasoline, but of course a man like Mr Boylan didn’t have to worry about things like gasoline.

From time to time, Boylan looked oyer at her and smiled a little. The smile was ironical, she felt, and had to do with the fact that she was sure he knew she had been lying about her reasons for being alone so far from town, waiting senselessly for a bus that wouldn’t arrive for another half-hour. He leaned over and opened the glove case and brought out a pair of dark Air Force glasses and handed them to her. ‘For your pretty, blue eyes,’ he shouted, over the wind. She put the glasses on and felt very dashing, like an actress in the movies.

The Farmer’s Inn had been a relay house in the post-colonial days when travel between New York and upstate had been by stage coach. It was painted red with white trim and there was a large wagon wheel propped up on the lawn. It proclaimed the owner’s belief that Americans liked to dine in their past It could have been a hundred miles or a hundred years away from Port Philip.

Gretchen combed her hair into some sort of order, using the rearview mirror. She was uncomfortable and conscious of Boylan watching her. ‘One of the nicest things a man can see in this life,’ he said, ‘is a pretty girl with her arms up, combing her hair. I suppose that’s why so many painters have painted it.’

She was not used to talk like that from anv of the boys who

had gone through high school with her or who hung around her desk at the office and she didn’t know whether she liked it or not. It seemed to invade her privacy, talk like that. She hoped she wasn’t going to blush any more that afternoon. She started to put on some lipstick, but he reached out and stopped her. ‘Don’t do that,’ he said authoritatively. ‘You’ve got enough on. More than enough. Come.’ He leaped out of the car, with surprising agility, she thought, for a man that age and came around and opened the door for her.