Дональд Уэстлейк - Brothers Keepers

It was toward the library that Mrs. Flattery gestured, saying, “Come in. Sit down. I am sorry I didn’t know who you were, but Dan never told me he was expecting you.”

Brother Oliver said, “He hasn’t told you about the sale?”

“Sale?”

“Of the monastery.”

“Oh, Dan never talks business with me.” Having ushered us into the library, she now shooed us into matching tan leatherette armchairs. “Sit down, sit down.”

We sat. Brother Oliver said, “I’m hoping to convince him not to sell.”

That struck me as a cleverly oblique opening — attract first her curiosity, then her sympathy — but I saw at once it just wasn’t to be. “Oh, I’m sure Dan will do the right thing,” she said comfortably. “He has a fine business head.”

Brother Oliver did not easily give up the ship. “Sometimes,” he said, “a business head can make us lose sight of more important values.”

“Well, I know you’ll keep Dan on the straight and narrow,” she said, smiling at the both of us. “I’ll just radio him that you’re here.”

Brother Oliver, distracted from his doomed campaign, said, “Radio?”

“He’s out on his boat, with some friends. I suppose he simply forgot you were coming.” She sounded as though being indulgent of her husband’s willfulness or waywardness was her sole occupation and greatest pleasure in life.

“Well, in fact,” Brother Oliver said, treading delicately, “your husband doesn’t know we’re coming.”

She looked surprised. “You didn’t call?”

“I spoke with him on the phone, yes. But then I felt there was more to say and the phone wasn’t the best way to say it, so I took the chance on coming out.”

Mrs. Flattery frowned and pondered; I could see the movement on the side of her face where she was gnawing her cheek. Then she raised her eyebrows and shook her head and skeptically said, “Well, I don’t know. If you think that’s the way to handle him...”

“Handling” Daniel Flattery was obviously this woman’s career. She was speaking as a professional now, and she was dubious of our method. Still, there was nothing for us but to go through with it, and Brother Oliver said, “I’m just hoping that in a face-to-face meeting your husband and I will be better able to see one another’s point of view.”

“You may be right,” she said, without conviction. “I’ll radio,” she said, and departed.

“Brother Oliver,” I said, when we were alone, “I am losing faith in this journey.”

“Never lose faith, Brother Benedict,” he told me. “We may lose battles, but we never lose faith and we never lose the war.”

That sounded good but I doubted it meant anything, so rather than answer I spent the next few minutes looking at the Flatterys’ books. The far wall, which one saw most prominently on entering the room, was filled with Good Books obviously bought by the yard: a set of Dickens, a set of Twain, a set of Greek playwrights, another set of Dickens, a set of James Branch Cabell, a set of George Washington’s letters, another set of Dickens, and so on. The wall to the right was a veritable museum of recent trashy novels, all in book club edition but all with their dust jackets removed in the apparent hope that naked they would look older and more respectable. And the wall to the left was the no-nonsense bastion of a purposeful man: books on business accounting, on taxation, on real estate, books on inflation, on devaluation, on depression, books on politics, on economics, on sociology — and a biography of John Wayne.

I was looking at the fourth wall — religion, auto repair, gardening and physical fitness — when Mrs. Flattery came back, looking disheveled but undaunted. “So you’ll stay for lunch,” she said, rather more forcefully than necessary, and I guessed her radio contact with her husband had been less than totally serene. He had more than likely objected to his wife’s having let us into his house, and she had more than likely informed him it was up to him to come back and do his own dirty work. At least, that was the little drama I invented for her current appearance and invitation.

Brother Oliver bowed politely and gave her our warm thanks and told her we would be delighted to stay for lunch. She nodded briskly and said, “That’s settled, then. Dan won’t get back for an hour or so, you’ll have plenty of time. Come along now, I’m sure you’ll want to wash up.”

Her name was Eileen. She was Daniel Flattery’s daughter, she was at the most thirty years of age, and she had a black-haired delicate-boned cool-eyed slender beauty that would undoubtedly keep on improving until she was well into her forties.

She was introduced to us at lunch. So were her brothers, two stick figures named Frank and Hugh, and Hugh’s stick-figure wife Peggy. And so was a callow, shifty-eyed, weak-chinned, silly-moustached fop named Alfred Broyle who was introduced as “Eileen’s young man.” I wasn’t surprised to note the girl’s lips tighten with annoyance at that description; of course he wasn’t her young man.

These five, with Mrs. Flattery and Brother Oliver and myself, made up the luncheon party on the glass-enclosed slate-floored back porch. I had expected servants, but Mrs. Flattery and Eileen served the meal, while the unmarried son, Frank, was dispatched later for extra or forgotten items.

Mrs. Flattery asked Brother Oliver to say grace, which he did; I rather liked the way Eileen’s full black hair lay across her cheekbone when she bowed her head. Brother Oliver prayed:

“Almighty God, bless we pray this repast that has been prepared for the stranger as well as for family and friends. Bless the householder who has made it possible and keep him safe upon the bosom of Your ocean. Bless, we supplicate Thee, those who dwell in this house and safeguard them always, that they may never be forced naked from their shelter into the coldness of the outer world. Protect all Your children, we beseech Thee, and provide them with the food and shelter they must have. For this feast before us, we are grateful to Thee.”

I thought all that a bit heavy-handed, but Brother Oliver had apparently decided to batter away at Mrs. Flattery’s indifference no matter how Herculean the task. As to the lunch being a feast, that was hardly any overstatement at all. There were cold roast beef, cold ham and cold chicken, potato salad, macaroni salad and coleslaw, white bread and pumpernickel, coffee, tea, milk and beer. We sat at a long glass-topped table with chrome legs — wasn’t Eileen’s skirt rather short for this time of year? — and spent the first five minutes or so in happy confusion, passing trays and condiments back and forth. The sons and Brother Oliver and Mrs. Flattery all constructed great tottering sandwiches while the rest of us eschewed bread — well, I did chew some pumpernickel — and ate mostly with knife and fork.

I do drink wine and beer sometimes in the monastery, but I thought it better today, so far from home and so surrounded by new experiences — eating at a table with women for the first time in ten years, for instance — to limit myself to tea. Brother Oliver, however, drained his beer glass several times with obvious enjoyment.

I was on the side of the table facing the windows and the short-cropped lawn with its few large old trees and the gray waters of the Bay beyond. That wind-ruffled water looked cold, and I found myself wondering what might happen if, despite Brother Oliver’s recently expressed wishes on the subject, something of a fatal nature were to happen out there to Daniel Flattery. Would his wife or these sons be easier to deal with?

I was skating close to the precincts of sin all at once, coming very near to desiring the death of another human being. I averted my gaze from the Bay, trying to distract my thoughts. Glancing obliquely through the glass top of the table I spied again Eileen Flattery’s gleaming knees and the shadowed slopes curving away from them. I quickly looked at the remains of the cold ham.