Auntie Mame Page 13

“Well,” Auntie Mame cooed, “not precisely the same Agnes. Patrick, bring on the new Miss Gooch!”

  Woodenly, I threw open the dressing-room door and out stepped Agnes. She looked terrific, although her eyes were a little glazed. However, I hadn’t seen Brian’s—his bright blue stare was really frightening.

  “Isn’t she lovely, Brian?” Auntie Mame trilled. He just swallowed, and I saw his pointed pink tongue dart over his lips.

  “Well, run along, you two. Have a glorious time. Ta-ta, my dears. Have fun!”

  Agnes reached the door, turned, and stared blindly back into the room; then she smiled enigmatically and said: “Hotcha!”

  After the front door closed, Auntie Mame said, “Well, another problem solved. My, but didn’t Agnes look stunning! I never dreamed she had so many possibilities. Poor little mouse. I really did a job on her, didn’t I? But really, darling, you know with a girl like Agnes it’s just wasted effort.”

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “Oh, you know. She’s sweet, but she has no fire. That girl simply has no sex drive. Well,” she said, “here we are, alone together on New Year’s Eve. We can just have a pleasant little tête à tête. There’s something I want to ask you, anyway. Just stir up the fire and run down for some more champagne and then we’ll be just as snug as …” She sneezed and made an airy gesture with her Kleenex.

  “New Year’s Eve,” she began, with a dreamy expression. “La, the memories! You know, your Uncle Beau and I were married on New Year’s Eve—just three years ago tonight.” She blew her nose, either from emotion or her head cold. “Didn’t we all have a lark when dear Beau was alive, darling?”

  “Yes, we certainly did,” I said honestly.

  “You know, it’s been awfully hard for me these last two years—a widow, alone and lonely in the world.”

  “I know.”

  “Of course, I have you and this house and more money than I’ll ever need, but that isn’t quite the same, is it, darling?”

  “No,” I said. “I really loved Uncle Beau.”

  “Everyone did. A fine, great specimen of a man. Those big brown eyes and those masses of heavenly red-gold hair on his chest. Well,” she sighed, “talking about him won’t bring him back, more’s the pity. Yet I feel this empty aching void—here,” she said, indicating a well-rounded breast, “for someone like dear Beau.”

  I knew what was coming and I hated it.

  “You’d like to go to Ireland, wouldn’t you, pet?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Oh, really, darling? All that green, the fresh springy turf, the music of her speech, the horse fairs, the Abbey Theatre, witty conversation with A. E. and Synge?”

  “They’re dead.”

  “Well, with other witty Irish. And wouldn’t you like to see that old nurse of yours again—Flora?”

  “Norah.”

  “Well, darling, Brian and I were talking about a summer in Ireland. And we both want you to come—a sort of family trip.”

  “Family?”

  “Well, a sort of honeymoon à trois.”

  “You mean you’re thinking of marrying Brian?”

  “Well, rather, darling. You know, I’ve mourned dear Beau for nearly two years, and now I feel I’ve arrived at the time in life when I need another Beau.”

  “Brian isn’t in the least like Beau and you know it.”

  “Well, darling,” she said uncomfortably, “I need someone to look after me, and of course Brian needs looking after, too. He’s so shy.”

  “He’s about as shy as Jack the Ripper.”

  “What do you mean, dear?” she asked tensely.

  “Just what I said.”

  “Patrick, darling, you don’t dislike Brian, do you?”

  “No, I don’t dislike him; I detest him.”

  “Oh, that’s splendid, I was so afraid … You what?”

  “I said I hate him. He’s a cheap phony with the morals of a goat and the worst case of hot pants in New York …”

  “Why, you …”

  “He’s laid everything but the Atlantic Cable and he’ll go right on doing it. He’s been mooching off you for months now and you don’t even realize that he’s not writing a word of your silly old book.”

  “Now see here, young …”

  “And it would be just like you to get tied up to some he-whore with the roving eye who’s at least ten years younger than you are and who’s interested in you for just two things—one of which is money.”

  “You … you vile-minded little imp of Satan! How dare you speak about a keen intellect like Brian that way, you …”

  “And what’s more, he’s the most boring human being I’ve ever met.”

  “Get out of my room, you Judas! Get out, get out, get out!”

  “I’m going, don’t worry.”

  “And never set foot in it again. In fact, I never want to see you or hear you or speak to you again.”

  A champagne glass shattered against the wall just as I slammed her door.

  I was so mad about her throwing the glass that I yanked the door open and yelled: “Just for that I hope you do marry him. It’d serve you good and damned right!”

  “You get out of here, you slanderous little beast! Brian loves me! And I’m going to marry him the minute I can get out of this bed!”

  I stamped into my room and bounced into bed.

  “Patrick, darling. Wake up. Wake up, dear, I need you.” I opened an eye and saw Auntie Mame standing over me.

  “Go away,” I muttered, “you said you never wanted to speak to me again.”

  “Darling, this is serious. Agnes … Brian … they’ve never shown up.”

  “Wh-what time is it, anyway?” I asked, squinting in the lamplight.

  “It’s nearly six o’clock in the morning.”

  “Well, for God’s sake, it’s New Year’s Eve. Of course they’re not home.”

  “But, Patrick, dear. They never even went to Lindsay’s party. I was so worried I called Mary Lord Bishop—got her out of bed and everything—and she said she hadn’t laid eyes on them. Oh, darling, I’m so worried. It’s that car. I knew it was a mistake to give it to him. He drives like a demon.”

  All of a sudden I knew what had happened.

  “Thank God Agnes is with him. Brian’s so quixotic, but Agnes is a good, sensible girl. Oh, if only they haven’t been in some awful accident. Now get up and help me.”

  Auntie Mame started calling all the hospitals in New York, getting more and more frantic with each call, while I sat morosely and tried to keep awake. Then she called Lindsay Woolsey, Mary Lord Bishop—again—and most of the people she knew. By eight in the morning, all of medical and literary New York had been aroused by Auntie Mame. She was at the end of her rope at nine o’clock when the doorbell rang.

  Gathering her bed sacque around her, she fluttered down the stairs and opened the door. There was a moment’s silence, then I heard her scream, “Oh, my God!”

  I raced down the stairs to the hall where she was standing with a yellow telegram in her hand. I took it from her and read:

  THE FIRE WITHIN ME WAS TOO STRONG

  STOP BRIAN AND I HAVE ELOPED STOP GIVE

  YOUR UNDERSTANDING YOUR FORGIVENESS

  AND YOUR BLESSING TO YOUR

  LOVING

  AGNES GOOCH

  Silently Auntie Mame mounted the stairs with me following her. She went to her desk and picked up the manuscript of Buffalo Gal. She carried it to the fireplace and dropped it on the grate. Then she removed the bed sacque which Agnes had crocheted and dropped that in, too. The blaze was terrific. Shivering slightly, she got into her bed and motioned me to the slipper chair beside it. She opened the last bottle of champagne, poured two glasses, and handed me one.

  “Happy New Year, darling,” she said.

  Chapter Six<
br />
  on a Mission of Mercy

  The little spinster in the Digest also had something of a reputation as a midwife. Well, not really a midwife, but she’d done such a splendid job of raising this foundling that other young mothers came to her—mind you, a woman who’d never even been married—for advice on having babies and caring for them. And she was never too busy, the article says, to drop everything and pitch right in.

  I, for one, don’t think that’s quite fair. In the first place, I was ten years old and way beyond the diaper-and-formula stage when Auntie Mame first got her hands on me. If I’d been any younger, who knows what might not have happened.

  But Auntie Mame was perfectly willing to interrupt her own life and plow right into somebody else’s, and although she’d never had a baby and had never been around any babies and didn’t even like babies, she felt more than competent to see a young girl through maternity.

  I thought I’d heard the last of the unfortunate Brian O’Bannion and the even more unfortunate Agnes Gooch, but I hadn’t. A year and a half later my life and my school career were invaded by Agnes in person and Brian at least by proxy. It was my last term at St. Boniface Academy in Apathy, Massachusetts, and I was counting the days until commencement would set me free from that somber institution. But one cool afternoon in spring we were marching—we never walked at St. B’s, we marched—from prayers to the playing field when I heard a hissing sound in the bushes. I turned and stared. Everyone else turned and stared, too. It was Ito. His hand flicked out and shoved one of Auntie Mame’s big blue envelopes into mine and then he disappeared again into the protective coloration of the forsythia.

  When we got to the locker room I darted into the can, slammed the door, and tore open the envelope.

  Darling, darling boy—

  Come at once! I need you. I’ll be at Ye Olde Greene Shutters Sweete Shoppe, heavily disguised.

  Hurry!

  Auntie Mame

  I waited until I heard the rest of the class clatter out to the track field, then I raced out of the building, scaled the wall, and made for the tea room via the back alleys of the town.

  Ye Olde Greene Shutters was the gathering place for the gentlewomen of Apathy, who met there every afternoon to gobble down barrels of tea and butterscotch sauce. It was packed when I got there but I had no trouble spotting Auntie Mame. She was seated in a dim corner wearing a slinky black dress, a big black hat with heavy veiling, dark glasses, and a black broadtail cape. If she’d been naked she couldn’t have been more conspicuous among the dowdy silk prints and amber beads around her. I went to her table. “Auntie Mame …”

  “Oh, my little love,” she whispered huskily, “you came straight to me with a devotion that penetrates all disguises. Couldn’t you have got here earlier?”

  “What’s the matter, Auntie Mame?” I asked. “What are you doing in Apathy, and why are you disguised?”

  “I’m on a mission of mercy, child, and I need your strong young arm, your agile young brain to help me.”

  “You oughtn’ta be away from the ’cademy, sonny,” the waitress said to me, “but what’ll it be?”

  “A cheeseburger and a chocolate malted,” I said.

  “He’ll have no such thing,” Auntie Mame said. “Just bring my check. We’re leaving at once.”

  After a steady diet of watery stews and saltpeter soups at St. Boniface, I was kind of miffed, but too curious to argue. “What is it, Auntie Mame?” I asked. “What’s happened?”

  She took off her dark glasses and gave me a blazing look. “It’s Agnes Gooch. Ah, what you’ve done to that poor innocent virgin!”

  “What I’ve done? I haven’t seen old foureyes since …”

  “Oh, not you in particular,” Auntie Mame said irritably, “you in the collective sense—Men! Most specifically that vulgar, pretentious, grade-Z poet, Brian O’Bannion. The beast! Misusing poor little Agnes and then casting her out upon the mercies of a cruel and censorious world!”

  “Not so fast,” I said. “Just what has happened?”

  “Only the inevitable! That cur took poor Agnes to California in the car I bought him, seduced her, and then deserted her, leaving her alone, penniless, and pregnant.” Several women turned and stared.

  “No kidding,” I said. Then I added: “Not so loud, please.”

  “Kidding indeed! Do you think I’d leave a busy season in New York to move bag and baggage up to this cultural backwash for a joke? Like a wounded animal poor Agnes came to me. I was the only port in a storm. Naturally she couldn’t turn to that puritanical family of hers.”

  My heart stood still. “Wh-what did you say about moving up here b-bag and baggage?” Then a terrible realization dawned. “Where is Agnes now?”

  “At the Old Coolidge House.”

  “The—the Old Coolidge House right here in Apathy?” My question was totally unnecessary. Naturally Auntie Mame, choosing to do things under the cloak of secrecy, would have selected the only hotel in town which was a shrine of the New England Historical Society, and the meeting place of the D.A.R., Mayflower Descendants, Chamber of Commerce, Rotary Club, Watch and Ward Society, and the Board of the St. Boniface Academy.

  “Certainly, right here in Apathy. I’ve engaged quite a comfortable suite. I had to help poor Agnes have her baby and I had to pick a place where we were unknown.”

  “Do you mean,” I said steadily, “that out of forty-eight states and the District of Columbia you had to select Massachusetts? And that out of a thousand towns in Massachusetts you had to choose the one where I am?”

  “But naturally, my little love,” she said with maddening logic. “I knew you would feel it your duty to stand by poor, hunted Agnes.”

  “But you’ve got old Agnes parked right next to the school. The hotel is the place where everybody …”

  “Of course, darling. I wanted it centrally located. That’s why I chose it—so you could be at hand to help me bring a new little life into the world and help me nurture this poor broken blossom back to …”

  “But, Auntie Mame, I’ll get in a hell of a jam. In a few weeks I can be out of this awful dump. But they’ll find out just as sure as …”

  “Nonsense! How could they possibly discover anything? We arrived in darkness last night. I’ve even gone to the trouble of taking the suite under an assumed name. I’ve engaged a Boston doctor who is the soul of discretion. It’ll only be a matter of weeks until the baby is born, I’ll settle some money on Agnes, establish her somewhere, and then”—she paused—“I thought that you and I could take a little trip—Europe, I think—for the whole summer. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “Europe?” I breathed.

  “Yes, love, Europe,” she said slyly, “but only on the one condition that you help me get Agnes out of this mess. Is it a bargain?”

  I knew I was taking a fatal step, but the fleshpots of Paris after the chamber pots of St. Boniface were too strong for me. “Okay,” I said grimly.

  “Good! Now let’s be off to poor Agnes.” Auntie Mame paid the check with a fifty-dollar bill. Then she drew the veil about her face and slunk out with such an air of mystery that I could feel every eye boring into our backs.

  Her Rolls-Royce was parked outside with all the shades drawn and Ito at the wheel. A crowd of curious onlookers had gathered to admire it and they stared after us, buzzing and scratching their heads as we drove off. Auntie Mame, lolling back and smoking behind the lowered shades, was happily unaware of the figure she was cutting. I wasn’t. In the first place, there had never been a Rolls or a Jap in Apathy before. In the second, St. Boniface had a spy system in the town that would have put the GPU to shame. When the masters weren’t patrolling the school itself, they were doing intelligence work in town. In the distance of three blocks I spotted the English master, the tennis coach, and the chaplain. The chaplain even removed his hat and bowed his head as the big black car passed by with its shades
down.

  I was so scared of being seen off campus that I didn’t pay much attention to Auntie Mame’s conversation. It was mostly stuff about the spirituality of motherhood, the mysterious beauty of pregnancy, and the serenity of the waiting period. When I asked her how she knew she told me not to be impertinent and said that Agnes was a changed woman.

  I was naturally hesitant about going into the Old Coolidge House, but Auntie Mame was getting restive and pushed me into the front door, where I came face to face with the room clerk—a paid informer for St. Boniface. The first thing he did after he saw my school blazer was to ask if I had a pass to be off campus. That’s the kind of school it was. “Certainly he has!” Auntie Mame snapped, and yanked me up the stairs so fast that he couldn’t ask to see it.

  Agnes let us into the suite herself and then locked the door. She was changed, but I failed to see any mysterious beauty in her condition. First of all, she was enormous. Then, she’d never quite gotten over the brief fling at high style she’d enjoyed on the fateful New Year’s Eve when she eloped with Brian. Now she’d mixed the ateliers of Paris with the crochet hook of Kew Gardens so that she looked like a cross between a demimondaine and a string laundry bag. She’d made her maternity wardrobe herself. Agnes had taken to putting on a lot of make-up, too, and she did it very badly. Seeing her groping around without her prim spectacles, garishly dressed and whorishly painted, she looked less like the mysterious beauty Auntie Mame had promised and more like a fallen woman who was paying the customary price for lust and/or incaution.

  Nor was there much trace of spirituality or serenity. Always one to feel sorry for herself when she had little cause to do so, Agnes now had a damned good reason and she overflowed with tears of self-pity. She threw her arms around me and wept bitterly, the overload of mascara running in muddy rivulets down her rouged cheeks. Her entire vocabulary seemed to be made up of such terms as Silly Girl, Fool, Wanton, and Woman Wronged. Well, I can’t quite put my finger on it, but Agnes was a mess.

  While Agnes vilified herself, Auntie Mame removed some of her disguise, fluffed her hair, settled down on the Empire sofa in the parlor, and rang downstairs for refreshments—eggnog for Agnes, tea for me, and cognac for herself. “Blow your nose now, Agnes,” Auntie Mame said crisply, “and do stop sniffling. You know it upsets me. Well, my little love, you see how easy all this is going to be. Here we are, a snug little family unit, perfectly respectable for all the world to see.”