The Towers of Love (12 page)

“I think that was your master stroke,” he said.

“Oh, goodness, it wasn't
mine
,” Titi said. “No-no-no-no-no-no. That was her idea entirely.”

“Well, she gives you full credit for it,” Hugh said dryly.

“She's just being sweet,” he said. “She's just being modest and generous and sweet.”

“Oh,” he said. “Well, probably.”

“What I was trying to capture,” Titi said, “what I was trying to capture in the drawing-room was the absolute essence of your mother. I was trying to
convey
, to get at the very core of her—of all her many interests and all the marvellous facets of her unique personality. Your mother, of course, is a woman who is terribly and vitally interested in so many different things—in
books
and
paintings
and
tapestries
and
sculpture
, and in ancient
civilisations
and cultures, and music, the opera and ballet, and in the problems of living, as well as in politics, economics and education and the human sciences. She's such a well-
rounded
person, and I was trying to capture, to re-create, that sort of feeling in her drawing-room.”

That, Hugh thought, must certainly be ranked as one of the most inaccurate descriptions of his mother he had ever heard. But he said, “Well, you've done it nobly. Just nobly.”

Titi's brown eyes lolled towards him. “I can see you have her same exquisite taste,” he said.

“Do you have any other name beside ‘Titi,' Titi?” Hugh asked.

“It's very long and French and hard to remember,” Titi said, and he reached in the pocket of his velvet jacket and pulled out a small black-lacquered card case. “Here's my card,” he said, and he extracted a slim enamelled card from the case.

Hugh took the card and put it beside his plate. “Thanks,” he said.

“Call me up some time,” Titi said with a little breathless smile. “I'm almost always home.”

“Well, I wouldn't count on it if I were you,” Hugh said.

Pappy was pouring champagne now, and his mother lifted her glass. “A toast!” she said. “A toast to the darling boy on my right, Austin Callender, who's going to carry off my beautiful daughter to his castle. To my lucky daughter, and my lucky Austin!”

Austin reddened and smiled at his napkin. “Gosh, thanks, Mrs. Carey,” he said. “Thanks a whole lot.”

“To Pansy and Austin,” Hugh's father said.

Hugh looked at his father. His father lifted his glass and stared at it and, as he stared, the glass tipped slightly and a little of the liquid in it spilled and ran down across his fingers. His father put the glass slowly and very carefully down on the table again and frowned at it with concentration, and Hugh realised, with a small pang of sorrow, that his father was a little drunk. But then, after so many cocktails, it was probable that everyone at the table was now a little drunk except his mother. His father was going to try to lift the champagne glass once more. Quickly Hugh took his eyes away.

“I'm a dreadfully lucky woman,” his mother was saying to everyone. “I have two wonderful and fortunate children. My wonderful Pansy and my wonderful Hugh—the two happiest and best-adjusted children in the world. I want a toast now to my precious Hugh, who's come home successful and rich after having taken New York by storm!”

“You're quite the professional little mother, aren't you?” Tom McGinnis said.

Ignoring him, she went on. “Of course I take absolutely all the credit for my wonderful children. They'd be absolutely nothing if it weren't for me. I had a theory about raising them, you see. I never believed in letting there be any silver cord.”

“Oh, you're so lucky, darling,” Reba said.

“Edrita knows this, don't you, Edrita darling? You practically grew up with my children, didn't you? You were practically one of the family, weren't you, Edrita?”

“Yes, I was,” she said.

“You're quite a mother. I can tell that,” McGinnis said.

“I've never believed,” she began, “in letting there be any—” She stopped and let the sentence hang, as a look of distress, perceptible only to Hugh, passed quickly across her face and departed. “Never believed in that sort of thing,” she finished.

But he knew what she had been about to say. She had been about to repeat herself and to say again, “I've never believed in letting there be any silver cord.” She had finished the sentence lamely, perhaps. But at least she had not repeated herself. She was always careful to be perfect. As she talked, he knew, she continuously edited herself, always careful not to let a word or phrase appear that would not be bright or witty or amusing, in keeping with her characterisation. She was always cautious of the cliché, always conscious of her performance, and always aware of the impression she was making. She analysed the moods and faces and reactions of others, in which she saw herself somehow reflected. After all, weren't the battlegrounds on which her poise and conversation and manner were judged some of her most crucial testing-places? After all, wasn't she one of the charming Pryor sisters? Wasn't this, after all, the story of her life? Hugh sipped his champagne, the toast that was to have been for him.

After dinner they went into the library for brandy and mirabelle, and Hugh heard his mother saying quietly to her sister, “Reba, for God's sake, get rid of that dreadful man. He's drunk and he's boring, and I don't want him around another minute. You may not have him here for the night. Give him a cup of coffee and send him on his way.”

They stood, with their glasses, in the library, and the mood of everyone had somehow grown heavy and hesitant and awkward. Titi had cornered Austin now and was saying to him, “I'm terribly, vitally interested in stocks and bonds. I need to buy some, you see. I have all sorts of cash just lying around in banks, and I do need advice on how to invest it from some good person like you.”

“Well,” Austin was saying soberly, “I don't think you can do any better than I.B.M. right now, I really don't. There's been a split and I expect the price to jump way up in the next few weeks. So my very best advice to you would be to buy some I.B.M.”

“I.B.M.,” Titi repeated. “You see, that's just the sort of advice I need.”

Hugh wondered if somehow he ought to rescue Austin.

Edrita came up to him again. “Are you having a good time?” she asked him.

“Yes. Are you?” he asked her.

“I'm having a lovely time,” she said, with a little smile.

“You're such a funny girl.”

“Am I?”

“Yes.” And suddenly he said, “Let's meet to-morrow.”

“All right,” she said, and they separated.

Reba had Tom McGinnis by the arm, getting him ready to go.

“Good night, Reba darling,” his mother was saying. “I'm so sorry your dear little man has to rush off so soon.”

And, as Hugh stepped forward to say good night to McGinnis, Austin Callender came over to him and touched his sleeve. “Say, Hugh,” he whispered, his face crossed with worry. “I hate to mention this, Hugh, but I think that fellow Titi's
queer
.”

And then, after all the good nights he was the last one to go up the stairs, turning off the lights from the many switches as he went.

Outside his mother's room he stopped and stepped back into the darkness. Her door was open and, in the pink light, she and Titi were sitting on the bed, like conspirators, over her open jewel case. She was wearing the new hat. She had been modelling it for him.

“But what about the jewels with it?” she was saying. “I just can't decide.”

Titi held up a large, glittering pin and held it next to her. “No, no, no,” he said. “Wrong, wrong, wrong.” He replaced the pin. “Pearls and sapphires, darling,” he said. “Pearls and sapphires are all you should
ever
wear, Sandy.”

“Do you really think so, Titi?” She reached in the case. “I have these emerald ear-rings,” she said, holding them up.

“Sandy, you must never wear emeralds,” he said.

“Really, Titi?” she said. “Oh, let's see how they look on you, Titi,” and she reached across to him and clipped a brilliant stone to each of his ears. “Oh, they look marvellous on you, Titi!” she said.

Wearing the ear-rings, Titi said, “Sandy, I've got the most wonderful love-seat picked out for you for the drawing-room. Can you come down to New York to-morrow to look at it?”

“Why, of course, I'd love to, Titi,” she said.

Hugh went on down the hall to his father's room. His father was sitting in his chair, still dressed, a glass of brandy in his hand.

“Come on in, Hugh,” his father said. “Come on in and sit down. Come on in and let's talk.”

He came into the room. “Don't you think you'd better turn in, Dad?” he asked him.

“No. Let's talk. I want to talk. There's nobody else in the whole god-damned house that I can talk to. Nobody but you.”

“All right, Dad.”

“Pour yourself some brandy. Decanter's on the dresser there. Let's talk, Hugh. There's nobody else in the whole god-damned house that I can talk to any more. Nobody. Only you.”

He went to the dresser and poured himself a brandy from the decanter. But when he returned to his father's chair, he saw that his father had fallen asleep, breathing deeply, his head across his chest, the glass still in his hand.

Hugh removed the glass. The bed had been turned down, but Hugh went to it and pulled the covers back farther. Then he crossed the room again to where his father sat, and gently said, “Come on, Dad. Come on, old trooper.” He placed his hands in his father's armpits and lifted him—he was a heavy man and, asleep and unwilling, he was difficult to move—and, as he did, he realised that for some idiotic reason tears were running down his cheeks. “Come on, Dad,” he whispered. “Come on, Dad.”

He got him to the bed and laid him across it. Then, careful to disturb him as little as possible, he began undressing him, carrying each article, as he removed it, to the closet and hanging it neatly where it belonged. Then, when he had finished, he pulled the covers up around him, tucked them in, and went to the window and opened it a little way. He turned off the lamps, one by one.

Suddenly he realised that his mother was standing at the open door, watching him.

“Is he asleep?” she asked him.

“Yes.”

She stepped across the room towards her sleeping husband. He lay with his face buried in the crook of one arm. She stood, smiling down at him.

“He looks as if he's praying, doesn't he?” she said. Then she said, “‘Hush, hush, whisper who dares. Christopher Robin is saying his prayers.'”

Still smiling, she turned and went quickly out of the room.

Hugh turned off the last light. At the door, he said softly, “Good night, Dad,” to the darkness, and went out, pulling the door closed behind him.

Seven

The family, the family. They had been brought up to care for each other. In every emergency, and there had been emergencies, it was always the sense of family that brought them all together.

Alone, in his room, and unable to sleep, he was looking at the grey shadows of branches outside his window that traced themselves in marbly patterns on the white ceiling in the moonlight. And he was thinking about the family, and how it was the catastrophies that united them, and brought out the best in them. He was remembering Georgia Warm Springs, eighteen years ago, at the end of that long summer. They had all come there to be with him. His mother had taken a little house on the Shiloh Road, just five minutes from the Foundation, to be near him; his father had flown down on week-ends, and his Aunt Reba had flown down. Once or twice his little sister Pansy had been brought down for a visit, and there were cousins who had come, and other members of the family. But his mother was there constantly. He remembered those long, hot and windless afternoons, through that autumn and into the winter, and the way the sun changed in the dusty grass. Every morning, sprinklers played on the grass for hours, washing it green, but by evening it was brown again, covered with dust. His mother had worked with him, taking over where the nurses left off, and he remembered her beside him as he lay in the swimming baths, coaching him, making him move in the swirling, tepid water, making him do what he was sure he couldn't do, saying to him, “Turn. Now turn. Kick. Kick your leg. Kick your leg. Again. Again. Now turn …”

“I can't!” he would say.

“You can. Certainly you can. Now turn. Lift your arm. Up and down. Up and down.”

And, in his bed, she would massage him, kneading the stiffened muscles between her strong hands, rubbing him. Sometimes, in his dreams, he still felt the endless motion of her fingers. In those days, she had kept her long curved fingernails, which had been such a point of pride with her, pruned short and round, like a boy's, and unpolished. She had given up the extravagant clothes, and wore smocks and house dresses that she bought by the dozens at Montgomery Ward's, and she had let her hair go to its natural colour, a lustreless ash-blonde with premature streaks of grey. She had abandoned cosmetics and, for once in her life, looked her age. As she rubbed, sometimes she read to him. What had she read? Sometimes it seemed to him that she had read to him every book in the world, everything from
Black Beauty
to
Anna Karenina
. She had brought him things to do: paints and brushes and crayons, paper and scissors and paste, wood-burning sets and knitting needles; and she had sat beside him, making him use them, making him knit a sweater for himself, a scarf, a pair of mittens, making him paint awkward pictures of houses and dogs and trees and, while he painted, she rubbed, and talked to him about what they were going to do, the places they were going to see, the fun they were going to have together, when he was better.