Irwin Shaw - Rich Man, Poor Man

‘An hour ago. I’ve been looking for you all over.’

‘He probably drove her to the hospital. She works in the hospital on week nights.’

‘She isn’t in any hospital tonight, buddy,’ Claude said. ‘I followed them part of the way on the bike. They took the road up the hill. Towards his place. You want to find your sister tonight, I advise you to look in on the Boylan estate.’

Tom hesitated. It would have been different if Gretchen was with one of the fellows around her own age, off in a car to the lover’s lane down near the river for a little simple necking. Tease her a little later on. Hideous boy. Get a little of his own back. But with an old man like Boylan, a big shot in the town … He would rather not have to get mixed up in it. You never knew where something like that could lead you.

‘I’ll tell you something,’ Claude said, “if it was my sister, I’d look into it. That Boylan has quite a reputation around town. You don’t know some of the things I hear around the house when my father and uncle are talking and they don’t know I’m listening. Your sister may be asking for a big load of trouble… . ‘

‘You got the bike outside?’

Yeah. But we need some gas.’ The motorcycle belonged to Claude’s brother Al, who had just been drafted two weeks before. Al had promised to break every bone in Claude’s body if he came back and found that Claude had used the machine, but whenever his parents went out at night, Claude pushed it out of the garage, after siphoning off a little gas from the family’s second car, and raced around town for an hour or so, avoiding the police, because he was too young to have a licence.

‘Okay,’ Tom said. ‘Let’s see what’s happening up the hill.’

Claude had a length of rubber tubing slung on the motorcycle and they went behind the school, where it was dark, and opened the gas tank of a Chewy that was parked there and Claude put the tube in and sucked hard, then, as the gasoline came up, filled the tank of the motorcycle.

Tom got on behind and with Claude driving they spurted through back streets towards the outskirts of town and began to climb the long winding road that went up the hill to the Boylan estate.

When they got to the main gate, made of huge wrought-iron wings standing open and set into a stone wall that seemed to run for miles on each side, they parked the motorcycle behind some bushes. The rest of the way they’d have to go on foot, so as not to be heard. There was a gatekeeper’s cottage, but since the war nobody had lived in it. The boys knew the estate well.

For years, they had been jumping over the wall and hunting for birds and rabbits with BB guns. The estate had been neglected for years and it was more like a jungle than the meadowed park it had been originally.

They walked through the woods towards the main house. When they got near it, they saw the Buick parked in front. There were no lights on outside, but there was a gleam from a big French window downstairs.

They moved cautiously towards the flower bed in front of the window. The window came down almost to the ground. One side of it was ajar. The curtains had been drawn carelessly and with Claude kneeling in the loam and Tom standing astride him, they both could look inside at the same time.

As far as they could see, the room was empty. It was big and square with a grand piano, a long couch, and big easy chairs and tables with magazines on them. A fire was going in the fireplace. There were a lot of books on the shelves along the walls. A few lamps did for the lighting. The double doors facing the window were open and Tom could see a hallway and the lower steps of a staircase.

‘That’s the way to live,’ Claude whispered. ‘If I had a joint like this, I’d have every broad in town.’

‘Shut up,’ Tom said. ‘Well, there’s nothing doing here. Let’s move.’

‘Come on, Tom,’ Claude protested. ‘Take it easy. We just got here.’

‘This isn’t my idea of a big night,’ Tom said. ‘Just standing out in the cold looking at a room with nobody in it.’

‘Give it a chance to develop, for Christ’s sake,’ Claude said. ‘They’re probably upstairs. They can’t stay there all night.’

Tom knew that he didn’t want to see anybody come into that room. Anybody. He wanted to get away from that house. And stay away. But he didn’t want to look as though he was chickening out. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll give it a couple of minutes.’ He turned away from the window, leaving Claude on his knees peering in. ‘Call me if anything happens,’ he said.

The night was very still. The mist rising from the wet ground was getting heavier and there were no stars. In the distance, below them, there was the faint glow of the lights of Port Philip. The Boylan grounds swept away from the house in all directions, a myriad of great old trees, the outline of the fence of a tennis court, some low buildings about fifty yards away that had once been used as a stable. One man living in all that. Tom thought of the bed he shared with his brother. Well,

Boylan was sharing a bed tonight, too. Tom spat..

‘Hey!’ Claude beckoned to him excitedly. ‘Come here, come here.’

Slowly, Tom went back to the window.

‘He just came in, down the stairs,’ Claude whispered. ‘Look at that. Just look at that, will you.’

Tom looked in. Boylan had his back to the window, on the far side of the room. He was at a table with bottles, glasses and a silver ice container on it. He was pouring whisky into two glasses. He was naked.

‘What a way to walk around a house,’ Claude said.

‘Shut up,’ Tom said. He watched as Boylan carelessly dropped some ice into the glasses and splashed soda from a siphon into the glasses. Boylan didn’t pick up the glasses right away. He went over to the fireplace and threw another log on the fire, then went to a table near the window and opened a lacquered box and took out a cigarette. He lit it with a foot long silver cigarette lighter. He was smiling a little.

Standing there, so close to the window, he was clearly outlined in the light of a lamp. Mussed, bright blond hair, skinny neck, pigeony chest, flabby arms, knobby knees, and slightly bowed legs. His dick hung down from the bush of hair, long, thick reddened. A dumb rage, a sense of being violated, of being a witness to an unspeakable obscenity, seized Tom. If he had had a gun he would have killed the man. That puny stick, that strutting, smiling, satisfied weakling, that feeble, pale, hairy slug of a body so confidently displayed, that long, fat, rosy instrument. It was worse, infinitely worse, than if he and Claude had seen his sister come in naked.

Boylan walked across the thick carpet, the smoke from his cigarette trailing over his shoulder, out into the hall. He called up the stairs. ‘Gretchen, do you want your drink up there or do you want to come down for it?’ He listened. Tom couldn’t hear the answer. Boylan nodded and came back into the room and picked up the two glasses. Then, carrying the whiskey, he went out of the room and up the stairs.

‘Jesus, what a sight,’ Claude said. ‘He’s built like a chicken. I guess if you’re rich you can be built like the Hunchback of Notre Dame and the broads still come running.’

‘Let’s get out of here,’ Tom said thickly.

‘What the hell for?” Claude looked up at him in surprise, the light that came through the parted curtains reflecting damply on his eyeglasses. “The action is just beginning.’

Tom reached down and grabbed Claude by the hair and jerked him savagely to his feet.

‘Hey, for Christ’s sake, watch what you’re doing,’ Claude said.

‘I said let’s get out of here.’ Tom held Claude roughly by his necktie. ‘And you keep quiet about what you saw tonight.’