Irwin Shaw - Rich Man, Poor Man

‘Happy to be of service, sir.’

Two sirs in twenty seconds. Perkins returned to his sacraments.

Rudolph would have liked to pee, but he couldn’t mention anything like that to a man of Perkins’ stature. Perkins whispered out of the room, a Rolls-Royce of a man. Rudolph went to the window and parted the curtains a little and looked out. A fog swirled up from the valley in the darkness. He thought of his brother, Tom, at the window, peering in at a naked man with two glasses in his hands.

Rudolph sipped at his drink. Scotch got a grip on him. Maybe one day he would come back and buy this place, Perkins and all. This was America.

Boylan came back into the room. He had merely changed from the suede jacket to a corduroy one. He still was wearing the checked wool shirt and paisley scarf. ‘I didn’t take time for a bath,’ Boylan said. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’ He went over to the bar. Ha had put some sort of cologne on himself. It gave a tang to the air around him.

“The dining-room is chilling,’ Boylan said, glancing at the table in front of the fire. He poured himself a fresh drink. ‘President Taft once ate there. A dinner for sixty notables.’ Boylan walked over to the piano and sat down on the bench, putting his glass beside him. He played some random chords. ‘Do you play the violin, by any chance, Rudolph?’

‘No.’

‘Any other instrument beside the trumpet?’

‘Not really. I can fake a tune on the piano.’

‘Pity. We could have tried some duets. I don’t think I know of any duets for piano and trumpet.’ Boylan began to play. Rudolph had to admit he played well. ‘Sometimes one gets tired of canned music,’ he said. ‘Do you recognise this, Rudolph?’ He continued playing.

‘No.’

‘Chopin, Nocturne in D-flat. Do you know how Schumann described Chopin’s music?’

‘No.’ Rudolph wished Boylan would just play and stop talking. He enjoyed the music.

‘A cannon smothered in flowers,’ Boylan said. ‘Something like that. I think it was Schumann. If you have to describe music, I suppose that’s as good a way as any.’

Perkins came in and said, ‘Dinner is served, sir.’

Boylan stopped playing and stood up. ‘Rudolph, do you want to pee or wash your hands or something?’

Finally, Thank you, yes.’

‘Perkins,’ Boylan said, ‘show Mr Jordache where it is.’

‘This way, sir,’ Perkins said.

As Perkins led him out of the room. Boylan sat down at the piano again and started playing from where he left off.

The bathroom near the front entrance was a large room with a stained-glass window, which gave the place a religious air. The toilet was like a throne. The faucets on the basin looked like gold. The strains of Chopin drifted in as Rudolph peed. He was sorry he had agreed to stay for dinner. He had the feeling that Boylan was trapping him.. He was a complicated man, with his piano-playing, his waders and whiskey, his poetry and guns and his burning cross and poisoned dog. Rudolph didn’t feel equipped to handle him. He could understand now why Gretchen had felt she had to get away from him.

When he went out into the hall again, he had to fight down the impulse to sneak out through the front door. If he could have gotten his boots without anyone seeing him, he might have done it. But he couldn’t see himself walking down to the bus stop and getting on it in stockinged feet. Boylan’s socks.

He went back into the livingroom, enjoying Chopin. Boylan stopped playing and stood up and touched Rudolph’s elbow formally as he led him to the table, where Perkins was pouring the white wine. The trout lay in a deep copper dish, in a kind of broth. Rudolph was disappointed. He liked trout fried.

They sat down facing each other. There was three glasses in front of each place, and a lot of cutlery. Perkins transferred the trout to a silver platter, with small boiled potatoes on it. Perkins stood over Rudolph and Rudolph served himself cautiously, uneasy with all the implements and determined to seem at ease. The trout was bright blue.

‘Truite au bleu’ Boylan said. Rudolph was pleased to note that he had a bad accent, or at least different from Miss Lenaut’s ‘Cook does it quite well.’

‘Blue trout,’ Rudolph said. That’s the way they cook it in France.’ He couldn’t help showing off on this one subject, after Boylan’s phoney accent.

‘How do you know?’ Boylan looked at his questioningly.

“Have you ever been in France?’ ‘No. In school. We get a little French newspaper for students every week and there was an article about cooking.’ Boylan helped himself generously. He had a good appetite. ‘Tu paries francais?’ Rudolph made a note of the to. In an old French grammar he

had once looked through, the student was instructed that the second-person singular was to be used for servants, children, non-commissioned soldiers, and social inferiors. ‘Un petit peu.’

‘Moi, j’etais en France quand j’etais jeune,’ Boylan said, the accent rasping. ‘Avec mes parents. J’ai vecu mon premier amour a Paris. Quand c’etait? Mille neuf cent-vingt-huit, vingt-neuf. Comment s’appelait-elle? Anne? Annette? Elle etait delicieuse.’

She might have been delicious, Boylan’s first love, Rudolph thought, tasting the profound joys of snobbery, but she sure didn’t work on his accent.

‘Tu as l’envie d’y aller? En France?’ Boylan asked, testing him. He had said he could speak a little French and Boylan wasn’t going to let him get away with it unchallenged.

Thai, je suis sur,’ Rudolph said, remembering just how Miss Lenaut would have said it. He was a good mimic. ‘Peut-etre apres l’Universite. Quand le pays sera retabli.’ ‘Good God,’ Boylan said, ‘you speak like a Frenchman.’ ‘I had a good teacher.’ Last bouquet for poor Miss Lenaut, French cunt.

‘Maybe you ought to try for the Foreign Service,’ Boylan said. ‘We could use some bright young men. But be careful to marry a rich wife first. The pay is dreadful.’ He sipped the wine. ‘I thought I wanted to live there. In Paris. My family thought differently. Is my accent rusty?’ ‘Awful,’ Rudolph said.

Boylan laughed. The honesty of youth.’ He grew serious.

‘Or maybe it’s a family characteristic. Your sister matches you.’

They ate in silence for a while, Rudolph carefully watching how Boylan used his knife and fork. A good gun, with beautiful manners.

Perkins took away the fish dishes and served some chops and baked potatoes and green peas. Rudolph wished he could send his mother up for some lessons in the kitchen here, Perkins presided over the red wine, rather than poured it. Rudolph wondered what Perkins knew about Gretchen. Everything, probably. Who made the bed in the room upstairs?

‘Has she found a job yet?’ Boylan asked, as though there had been no interruption in the conversation. ‘She told me she intended to be an actress.’

‘I don’t know,’ Rudolph said, keeping all information to himself. ‘I haven’t heard from her recently.’ ‘Do you think she’ll be successful?’ Boylan asked. ‘Have you ever seen her act?’

‘Once. Only in a school play.’ Shakespeare battered and reeling, in homemade costumes. The seven ages of man. The boy who played Jacques nervously pushing at his beard, to make sure it was still pasted on. Gretchen looking strange and beautiful and not at all like a young man in her tights, but saying the words clearly.

‘Does she have talent?’ Boylan asked.

‘I think so. She has something. Whenever she came on to the stage everybody stopped coughing.’

Boylan laughed. Rudolph realised that he sounded like a kid. ‘What I mean … ‘ He tried to regain lost ground. ‘Is, well, you could feel the audience focusing on her, being for her, in a way that they weren’t for any of the other actors. I guess that’s talent’