Yours faithfully,
Bother,Writson, Horn,
Pleader & Hoot
On the days of inclemency Balthazar B went to the Natural History Museum. Walking quietly there peeking in the antique shops along Brompton Road. And one afternoon he fell asleep in the Reptile Hall. And had a rather unpleasant dream. Of all the reptiles coming to life. The cobras, pythons and rattlesnakes. They writhed across the floors, pouring out of the glass cages they broke with lashing tails. To entwine, attack and poison, heads drawn back with deadly gleaming fangs to strike. To shout oneself awake and find me surrounded by blue uniformed museum attendants. Who were gently reassuring and brought me a glass of water. One smiled and said that sort of dream could happen to anyone.
I walked several times along Piccadilly. And down Regent Street to Pall Mall. Lurking by the doorways to listen. To find if one could hear distant screams from the attic rooms of clubs. Wondering always if Beefy were having me on. Balthazar my dear boy, of course we have scads of valuable tomes in the club library which are fulsomely documented treatises on the lash. The chaps of the old school, they sit there over whisky and soda and when the cries erupt and echo down the marble stairs, they say, hear hear, that's Roger, know his scream, George must be giving him his tonight. My dear boy Balthazar, one often lies there as the lash falls reading the personal column of The Times. Members select and reserve their fancied whip of an evening by appending thereto their racing colours. Always a fair crowd around the display cases in early afternoon. The whip chosen is entered in the whip log along with the lashes to be administered. These are checked of course daily to avoid members taking on too much at one go. Just after port is the best time for the lash to fall. There was a member expelled. He was distributing pictures of himself. Taken at moments when the lash was landed. That's simply not done. Chucked out he was. I think really it was his American style underwear that brought it about. But never think we're runaway masochists dear boy, the cat-o-nine tails is forbidden. And one is not to be caught using the Russian knout or oriental bastinado. And where was Beefy now. As one wanders and wishes to see him. And hear his lyric tales unfold. On a Wednesday morning I came down after breakfast in my room. And passing out the lobby there was a letter. Not pink but white. And somehow opening it. There seemed a gathering perplexing doom. After all these days of waiting. Decorators daily urged to finish the scraping and painting at Crescent Curve. My mother expecting me in Nice. And tomorrow I go to meet Beefy at our appointed time.
The Temple
London E.C.4
Dear Mr. B,
We very much regret to inform you that the arrangement reached between the principals concerning your marriage to the Miss Elizabeth Astrid Benedicta Trusscutt Fitzdare has now been withdrawn by the other side without explanation. We are taking the liberty to write again this day to enquire if this decision admits of no further discussion or if the matter may be reopened at a later date. However, it is only fair to make known to you now that as far as our opposite colleagues are aware, the instruction given them is final and the agreement reached thus far between the parties is cancelled. Our own personal regrets in this matter are hereby extended to you.
Yours faithfully,
Bother, Writson, Horn,
Pleader & Hoot
Balthazar B on that Wednesday. Walked out down the steps and into the street. To stand there for moments staring across the heads of passing people and the traffic and buses moving by. Suddenly to be told you're not wanted anymore. A bleak black curtain brought down. To fly by airplane to ask. But if one is not wanted how can I ever go. Or know whatever went wrong.
Balthazar B motored by taxi to the Temple. Mr. Pleader sat at his wide desk with bundles of paper tied in pink ribbon. He said in his experience it was all quite strange. But there was nothing one could do. The young lady, how was one to know, could have changed her mind. For any one of many reasons. As sad as that may be. I stood there as one was leaving, unable to shake hands. And saw propped upon the mantel, caught in the window light, Mr. Pleader's wife and little children, a dog among them, all smiling on the steps of a country house.
That September Balthazar B sat a month in his mother's flat in Avenue Foch. In a sunny vestibule off the drawing room watching a tank of fish. Each day staring out across one's hands placed on the top of knees. Two Polish women came to cook and clean. My mother still away in Nice. And back at Harrods waiting hall that afternoon. I was sitting. Beefy came. On the dot of the appointed time. And saw what the world had done to me. That I could not speak. And wrote for him what had happened on a piece of paper. He came and saw me every day high up in my suite. We sat hours together playing chess. He had taken a job on the stock exchange. And I knew he was missing so many days he would be fired. I wrote on my little pad of paper that it would not do for him to lose his job. Next day I took the boat and train I knew so well to Paris.
October came. And the fish in the tank had babies. Balthazar B stood up. And for the first time in many weeks went out. Across Paris walking and walking for miles. To make the blank future lift its daily dread. Until his mother returned. In a sporty car piled with luggage, a young man at the wheel whose name was Mario. And Balthazar moved out and into a suite in a hotel on the Avenue Kleber.
Mornings to walk and afternoons to soak an hour in a hot bath. He attended the steeple chase at Auteuil but could not wager a bet. Often he visited Uncle Edouard's grave. Passing up that cobbled little road and by the great green iron box. Where I put all my coins for the poor of Paris. Atop the grey stone was a bronze balloon and gondola. And one day with a wetted handkerchief I washed away the grimy soot till it was shining smooth again. Over this balloonist and hero of France who roused a cause celebre when he summoned the pompiers to put out his cigarette. And the only man who loved me when I was a little boy.
During a cold and bitter winter Balthazar took classes in comparative anatomy at the Sorbonne. And lying late at night abed, tomes open everywhere. Breakfast brought with the pretty portrait on the porcelain, touches of red blue and yellow. The warming deep crimson of these rooms. Ebony push buttons tipped with mother of pearl. The wall panels of pale golden satin brocades. The brass bedstead sitting on blobs of paws. The clock face I watch through all these months high on the wall with its wood cowl of grey and pale gold, each black numeral of every hour held in a little rainbow of roses. And the world did little to me here. As I sometimes watched out my window over the stone balcony and black railing. To walk out past the concierge each morning and there always seem to find a man urgently making arrangements to go to Istanbul.
Behind the grey stone of the Sorbonne was my other world. When one was staring so hard to take eyes desperately away from the sight of the cut open flesh of a dead man. Somehow seeing the same clochard, kicked and beaten, I saw that day when I was with Bella. So long ago on the green piece of land jutting out in the Seine. And then this one afternoon stepping from the great barren lecture hall, I stopped and looked down in the grey sunless courtyard of the medical school where the live dogs were kept. A strange thought went through my head. I live and draw a flow of gold. From a dead father's reservoir of riches. I retreat further and further back. Behind my own lonely elegance. Where no one will ever again get to know me. And speak less and less. And on that first day my voice came back when the little fishes in the tank were born. I wrote to Beefy. Care of his club and the stock exchange. Asked him please write to me. One wants so much to hear a word.