Irwin Shaw - Rich Man, Poor Man

Rudolph hesitated. He’d miss his date with Julie. But he was fishing Boylan’s stream, and he was getting a pair of waders. ‘If I could make a telephone call,’ he said.

‘Of course,’ Boylan said. Then to Perkins. ‘Tell Cook well be two.’ Axel Jordache would not eat trout for breakfast. ‘And while you’re at it,’ Boylan said, ‘bring down a pair of nice, warm socks and a towel for Mr Jordache. His feet are soaked. He doesn’t feel it now, being young, but as he creaks to the fireside forty years from now, he will feel the rheumatism in his joints, even as you and I, and will remember this afternoon.’ ‘Yes, sir.’ Perkins said and went off to the kitchen or to the Armoury, whatever that was.

‘I think you’ll be more comfortable if you take your boots off here,’ Boylan said. It was a polite way of hinting to Rudolph that he didn’t want him to leave a trail of wet footprints all overthe house. Rudolph pulled off the boots. Silent reproach of darned socks.

‘We’ll go in here,’ Boylan pushed open two high carved wooden doors leading off the hallway. ‘I think Perkins has had the goodness to start a fire. This house is chilly on the best of days. At the very best it is always November in here. And on a day like this, when there’s rain in the air, one can ice-skate on one’s bones.’ One. One, Rudolph thought, as bootless, he went through the door which Boylan held open for him. One can take a flying jump for oneself.

The room was the largest private room Rudolph had ever been in. It didn’t seem like November at all. Dark-red velvet curtains were drawn over the high windows, books were ranged on shelves on the walls, there were many paintings, portraits of highly coloured ladies in nineteenth-century dresses and solid, oldish men with beards, and big cracked oils. Rudolph recognised the latter as views of the neighbouring valley of the Hudson that must have been painted when it was all still farmland and forest. There was a grand piano with a lot of bound music albums strewn on it, and a table against a wall with bottles. There was a huge upholstered couch, some deep leather armchairs, and a library table heaped with magazines. An immense pale Persian carpet that looked hundreds of years old was shabby and worn to Rudolph’s unknowing eye. Perkins had, indeed, started a fire in the wide fireplace. Three logs crackled on heavy andirons and six or seven lamps around the room gave forth a tempered evening light. Instantly Rudolph decided that one day he would live in a room like this.

‘It’s a wonderful room,’ he said sincerely.

‘Too big for a single man,’ Boylan said. ‘One rattles around in it I’m making us a whiskey.’

‘Thank you,’ Rudolph said. His sister ordering whiskey in the bar in the Port Philip House. She was in New York now, because of this man. Good or bad? She had a job, she had written. Acting. She would let him know when the play opened. She had a new address. She had moved from the YWCA. Don’t tell Ma or Pa. She was being paid sixty dollars a week.

‘You wanted to phone,’ Boylan said, pouring whiskey. ‘On the table near the window.’

Rudolph picked up the phone and waited for the operator. A beautiful blonde woman with an out-of-style hair-do smiled at him from a silver frame on the piano. ‘Number, please,’ the operator said.

Rudolph gave her Julie’s number. He hoped that Julie wasn’t home, so that he could leave a message. Cowardice. Another mark against him in the Book of Himself.

But it was Julie’s voice that answered, after two rings.

‘Julie … ‘ he began.

‘Rudy!’ Her pleasure at hearing his voice was a rebuke. He wished Boylan were not in the room. ‘Julie,’ he said, ‘about tonight. Something’s come up …’

‘What’s come up?’ Her voice was stony. It was amazing how a pretty young girl like that, who could sing like a lark, could also make her voice sound like a gate clanging, between one sentence and the next.

‘I can’t explain at the moment, but … ‘

‘Why can’t you explain at the moment?’

He looked across at Boylan’s back. ‘I just can’t,’ he said. ‘Anyway, why can’t we make it for tomorrow night? The same picture’s playing and … ‘

‘Go to hell.’ She hung up.

He waited for a moment, shaken. How could a girl be so … so decisive? ‘That’s fine, Julie,’ he said into the dead phone. ‘See you tomorrow. ‘Bye.’ It was not a bad performance. He hung up.

‘Here’s your drink,’ Boylan called to him across the room. He made no comment on the telephone call.

Rudolph went over to him and took the glass. ‘Cheers,’ Boylan said as he drank.

Rudolph couldn’t bring himself to say Cheers, but the drink warmed him and even the taste wasn’t too bad.

‘First one of the day,’ Boylan said, rattling the ice in his glass. “Thank you for joining me. I’m not a solitary drinker and I needed it. I had a boring afternoon. Please do sit down.’ He indicated one of the big armchairs near the fire. Rudolph sat in it and Boylan stood to one side of the hearth, leaning against the mantelpiece. There was a Chinese clay horse on the mantelpiece, stocky and warlike-looking. ‘I had insurance people here all afternoon,’ Boylan went on. ‘About that silly fire I had here on VE Day. Night, rather. Did you see the cross burn?’

‘I heard about it,’ Rudolph said.

‘Curious that they should have picked my place,’ Boylan said. ‘I’m not Catholic and I’m certainly not black or Jewish. The Ku Klux Klan up in these parts must be singularly misinformed. The insurance people keep asking me if I have any particular enemies. Perhaps you’ve heard something in town?’

‘No,’ Rudolph said carefully.

‘I’m sure I have. Enemies, I mean. But they don’t advertise,’ Boylan said. Too bad the cross wasn’t nearer the house. It would be a blessing if this mausoleum burnt down. You’re not drinking your drink.’

‘I’m a slow drinker,’ Rudolph said.

‘My grandfather built for eternity,’ Boylan said, ‘And I’m living through it’ He laughed. ‘Forgive me if I talk too much.

There’re so few opportunities ot talking to anybody who has the faintest notion of what you’re saying around here.’

‘Why do you live here, then?’ Rudolph asked, youthfully logical.

‘I am doomed,’ said Boylan, with mock melodrama. ‘I am tied to the rock and the bird is eating my liver. Do you know that, too?’

‘Prometheus.’

‘Imagine. Is that school, too?’

‘Yes.’ I know a lot of things, mister, Rudolph wanted to say.

‘Beware families,’ Boylan said. He had finished his drink fast and he left the mantelpiece to pour another for himself. ‘You pay for their hopes. Are you family-ridden, Rudolph? Are there ancestors you must not disappoint?’

‘I have no ancestors,’ Rudolph said.

‘A true American,’ said Boylan. ‘Ah, the waders.’

Perkins was in the room, carrying a hip-length pair of rubber boots and a towel, and a pair of light-blue wool socks. ‘Just put everything down, please, Perkins,’ Boylan said.

‘Very good, sir.’ Perkins put the waders within Rudolph’s reach and draped the towel over the edge of the armchair. He put the socks on the end table next to the chair.

Rudolph stripped off his socks. Perkins took them from him, although Rudolph had intended to put them in his pocket. He had no idea what Perkins could do with a pair of soggy patched cotton socks in that house. He dried his feet with the towel. The towel smelled of lavender. Then he drew on the socks. They were of soft wool. He stood up and pulled on the waders. There was a triangular tear at the knee of one of them. Rudolph didn’t think it was polite to mention it. They fit fine,’ he said. Fifty dollars. At least fifty dollars, he thought. He felt like D’Artagnan in them.