“We don’t have a phone.”
“Oh, yes,” Boylan said. “I believe I once tried looking it up in the directory. I’ll drop you a line. I think I remember the address.” He looked vaguely up the marble staircase. “Nothing much up there to interest you,” he said. “Bedrooms. Mostly closed off. My mother’s upstairs sitting room. Nobody sits there anymore. If you’ll excuse me a moment, I’ll go up and change for dinner. Make yourself at home. Give yourself another drink.” He looked frail going up the sweeping staircase to the other floors, which would be of no interest to his young guest, except, of course, if his young guest were interested in seeing the bed upon which his sister had lost her virginity.
III
Rudolph went back into the living room and watched Perkins laying a table for dinner in front of the fire. Priestly hands on chalices and goblets. Westminster Abbey. Graves of the poets. A bottle of wine poked out of a silver ice bucket. A bottle of red wine, uncorked, was on a sideboard.
“I have made a telephone call, sir,” Perkins said. “The boots will be ready by Wednesday next.”
“Thank you, Mr. Perkins,” Rudolph said.
“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 you. 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 the time for a bath,” Boylan said. “I hope you don’t mind.” He went over to the bar. He 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 besides 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 recognize 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 went 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’s 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 living room, 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 were 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.
“Truit 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 him 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 parles français?”
Rudolph made a note of the tu. 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’étais en France quand j’étais jeune,” Boylan said, the accept rasping. “Avec mes parents. J’ai veçu mon premier amour à Paris. Quand c’était? Mille neuf cent vingt-huit, vingt-neuf. Comment s’appelait-elle? Anne? Annette? Elle était délicieuse.”
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.
“J’irai, je suis sûr,” Rudolph said, remembering just how Miss Lenaut would have said it. He was a good mimic. “Peut-être après l’Université. Quad le pays sera rétabli.”
“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 at 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 more serious. “Or maybe it’s a family characteristic. Your sister matches you.”