Auntie Mame Read online

  “That won’t be necessary, Patrick. Our interview will be a very short one. I have papers to mark this afternoon, and you shouldn’t be eating between meals.”

  I hoped ardently that Auntie Mame and Agnes would be out motoring, but the big car was parked in front of the Old Coolidge House. Auntie Mame’s windows were open and I could hear her portable gramophone playing more advanced music by Paul Hindemith.

  “I’m not allowed into the hotel without a pass, Mr. Pugh,” I said desperately. “My aunt’s in rooms 3-A-B-C and D. I’ll go up the rope and …”

  “Nonsense, Patrick. You can go anywhere as long as you’re accompanied by a master. Come.”

  By the time we’d reached the top floor, Auntie Mame had wearied of Hindemith’s “Symphonic Metamorphosis” and was playing Bessie Smith’s “Empty Bed Blues.” I tapped timidly at the door. “Yes!” she called. I opened it and stepped in.

  “Darling …” she called. Then, seeing Mr. Pugh, the words died.

  Auntie Mame was not exactly prepared to play the role of my respectable guardian. She was wearing shorts, a halter, and a lot of Lydia van Rensselaer Essence of Youth. Her hair was tied up in a red ribbon, and she was on the floor doing something which looked obscene but was really only an exercise to firm the seat and thighs. There was a half-finished bottle of champagne at her side and the room was littered with yellow-backed French novels, a lot of fashion magazines, and six volumes of Gibbon. But even an aunt who looked “fast” was better than none at the moment.

  “Auntie Mame,” I said, “this is …”

  “How dare you come to my room, sir?” Auntie Mame said coldly, staring straight through me. “I must ask you to leave at once or I’ll be forced to call the management.”

  Mr. Pugh spoke up. “Do you mean to say, um, madam, that this young man is not your nephew?”

  “I never saw him before in my life,” she said.

  “Auntie Mame,” I said desperately, “you’ve got to explain to Mr. Pugh about Agnes. I’ll get kicked out of school. He knows. He …”

  “Please to leave immediately, young man. You’re obviously suffering under the delusion that we have met before. Au contraire, I am a lone widow, residing here with my sister-in-law and a body servant.” Once Auntie Mame got her teeth into a part she played it to the hilt.

  “Mr. Pugh,” I said, “she is my Aunt Mame. She’s Mrs. Beauregard Burnside. Really she is.”

  “This poor lad is desperately in need of psychiatric help,” Auntie Mame said, getting up off the floor and commanding as much dignity as possible under the circumstances. “I am Mrs. Dennis Burns and my first name is Arabella …”

  At that point Agnes, who’d been listening at the door, burst into the room, sopping with tears. “It’s true, Mrs. Burnside. Patrick has been discovered. Now all the world will know me as a wanton woman.”

  Auntie Mame more or less had to give up. She told Mr. Pugh to sit down, poured him a glass of champagne, and retired to slip into a demure black sheer. In about an hour, with only a few embellishments, Auntie Mame gave him the whole story, while Agnes sobbed drearily into a crumpled hankie and kept moaning about her downfall.

  Almost against his will and quite against his better judgment, poor old Mr. Pugh was dragged into the conspiracy just to help me keep out of trouble if I was ever discovered. He took to tiptoeing into my room after bed check every night and escaping with me out of the window while Junior snored. Then he’d walk Agnes with me, go back to the hotel and have a drink—or two at the most—and play a couple of rubbers of bridge. Then we’d sneak back to school. He wasn’t supposed to be out at night either. It even got to be quite a lot of fun with Mr. Pugh along. He recited poetry to Agnes, who was kind of a pushover for poets, and cheered her up somewhat by telling her how Leonardo da Vinci and Alexander Hamilton and Lucrezia Borgia and several other famous people had all been illegitimate.

  My classwork was beginning to suffer from lack of sleep and study, and one night Mr. Pugh even insisted on taking Agnes out alone and making me stay in Auntie Mame’s parlor to bone up for a history exam. I didn’t get much work done. Auntie Mame had sent me to Boston that afternoon to buy a lot of new Bartok records, and she insisted on playing them at full volume.

  “Ah, my little love,” she said, pouring herself a drink, “a quiet evening at home, à deux, and a chance to have a little chat and listen to some really exciting modern masters. Of course, music therapy is important to the expectant mother, if only for the strong prenatal influences, but I do get a bit weary of Glazunov and Meyerbeer—pretty as they are.”

  “Yes, Auntie Mame,” I said. I yawned and started in again on Prime Minister Disraeli and Queen Victoria.

  “And speaking of pretty, darling, didn’t you notice how nice Agnes looked tonight?”

  “Um,” I said. I hadn’t, but I had seen that she was wearing a kind of plain dark-blue maternity dress instead of one of her girl-gone-wrong outfits. She also hadn’t seemed quite so painted. I turned to Disraeli.

  “I also made Agnes up tonight,” Auntie Mame twittered, turning up the phonograph and running her fingers through my hair. “I said, ‘Agnes, cosmetics are to enhance, not to detract.’ Would you like to hear some Bloch, my little love?”

  “No, thank you.” Disraeli and Victoria and Gladstone and Beaconsfield were swimming in the Suez Canal with Napoleon and Wellington and Antony and Cleopatra.

  “You know, I think that our Agnes rather likes Mr. Pugh, and that Mr. Pugh rather likes our Agnes.”

  “Um-hm,” I said, trying fruitlessly to concentrate.

  The conversation ended as we heard Agnes clumping heavily up the stairs. She was laughing for the first time since she’d been in Apathy. “Oh, Mr. Pugh,” she said, “nobody has ever recited Gray’s Allergy and made it sound so beauty-ful.”

  St. Boniface Academy was pretty old, as American schools went, and they were great ones for tradition. They used quite a lot of British terms such as Old Boy, New Boy, Proctor, Digs, Tuck Shop, Playing Field, Master, Refectory, Greensward, and Common Room. There were traditional rites, too, like Ninth Class Pillow Fight, New Boys’ Indoctrination, Court of Confession, and Demerit Day—all of which were mislabeled as festivities and all of which reflected Dr. Cheevey’s considerable sadism. But one of the more tiresome festivals was Father and Son Day, a fairly new tradition that was celebrated at the beginning of May. It was the occasion for fathers who were Old Boys to stretch their St. B. blazers over their paunches and patronize fathers who hadn’t gone to St. B. and were consequently better dressed and better educated, albeit déclassé. Oh, it was a lark, Father and Son Day! There was a Maypole, and gymnastic feats, and relay races, and morris dancing by six unfortunate little boys from the lower school, and a medley of rousing St. B. songs sung by the fathers who were Old Boys while the fathers who weren’t stood sheepishly around looking as though they’d sell their souls for a drink.

  Well, Father and Son Day made me almost grateful to be an orphan, but do you think I could get anybody to believe it? Not many of the kids in my class had had the same two parents all the way through, and one guy had had five different fathers and was expecting a sixth in time for commencement. But I was the only one who didn’t have any father at all. However, there was always Mr. Babcock who, with an eye to keeping my account in the Trust Company, took me over with Junior on Father and Son Day. His dreaded invitation was delivered by Junior a week beforehand.

  “I got a letter from Daddy,” Junior said early one morning.

  “Really?” I said and yawned.

  “He says since you haven’t got any father will you be his guest again on Father and Son Day.”

  I couldn’t very well express my true sentiments, so I said, “Charmed.”

  “Mummy’s coming up, too,” Junior said.

  “In male attire?” I asked.

  “No, she wants to see me.”

  I couldn’t think wh
y.

  “Daddy says that you’re to get them rooms at the Old Coolidge House.”

  My heart stood still. “At the Old Coolidge House?” I breathed. Then I started thinking fast. “Gee, Junior, why do they want to waste all that money? Why don’t they just come up for the day and drive back? You know how your father is about saving dough.”

  “No,” Junior said, referring again to his father’s letter. “Daddy says that the Board of Directors are going to meet that night and it’ll be too late to drive back to Scarsdale. He says reserve two rooms and do it before the hotel is all booked up so …”

  “Golly, Junior,” I said, “what do they want to stay in a crummy old flea bag like the Coolidge House for? Why don’t they stay at The Longfellow Inn or Mrs. Abbot’s or over in Marblehead or maybe in Boston at the …”

  “No,” Junior said stolidly, “Daddy wants to stay at the Old Coolidge House. He likes the Old Coolidge House.”

  “Why?” I snarled. “Did he take some blonde there?”

  “It seems to me,” Junior said, “that when Daddy takes pity on you on Father and Son Day, the least you could do is … Say, what’s the matter with you lately, anyways? You’re always tired and I never see you at gym and you’ve got terrible circles under your eyes. You’re not doing anything at night are you?”

  I gulped. “Well, gosh, Junior …” Then I saw what he meant. “Yeah, sure I am, Junior. Six or seven times a night. It’ll drive me crazy and no nice girl will marry me and all my kids will be idiots. Be sure to tell your old man that for me next time you write.” I snatched up my towel and stalked off to the showers.

  When she heard that the Babcocks were coming to the same hotel for Father and Son Day, Auntie Mame couldn’t have been more co-operative about making herself—and Agnes—scarce. Since none of her encounters with Mr. Babcock could be even remotely described as pleasant, Auntie Mame was anxious to avoid another, particularly under the present circumstances. Straightaway she started making plans for an elaborate all-day outing, which would start at six in the morning of Father and Son Day and last until well after dark. She sent me into Boston to buy several yards of thick veiling, folding chairs, and a sunshade. She begged Mr. Pugh to go with them, but since he had to be on hand for Father and Son Day, he refused. “And if it rains,” Auntie Mame said dramatically, “we’ll just sit in the car. No sacrifice is too great for me to make for you, my little love.”

  Poor Agnes was more querulous than ever. She had a tendency to car sickness, she was the size of a rain barrel, and the Boston obstetrician had told her that any time now … But Auntie Mame was firm about having all traces of herself, her car, and her entourage out of sight of the Babcocks.

  The night before Father and Son Day Auntie Mame’s suite was in an uproar of packing for the outing. She put in six calls to the kitchen to make sure her hampers would be ready by dawn, and she telephoned the desk three times, first to ask to be awakened at six o’clock, then five, then four-thirty. Auntie Mame was reluctant even to let Agnes go out for her four-mile stint, but Agnes and Mr. Pugh seemed anxious to go and so I stayed behind to see that the books and records and sun lotion and dark glasses and the other effects necessary to one of Auntie Mame’s outings were assembled. By midnight Auntie Mame was already in her nightgown and robe and she shooed Mr. Pugh and me out without so much as a single hand of bridge. I went down the rope as usual and had to wait a long time in the bushes before Mr. Pugh came out of the Old Coolidge House.

  The weather was fair on Father and Son Day—too good for it, if you ask me. I was on edge from the minute the morning bell rang, but during calisthenics out on the greensward I saw the Rolls streak down the road with two shrouded figures in back and I began to relax.

  By ten o’clock the fathers had arrived. Mr. Babcock looked especially ridiculous in his old blazer and white flannels. I was rather pleased when he fell flat during the sack race and he was rather displeased when I won the rope-climbing contest hands down. Junior didn’t win anything, but then, he never did.

  Somehow the day dragged on through songs and speeches and sermons and stunts. It was almost eight when we sang

  “Hail to thee

  St. Boniface

  We’ll e’er to thee be true

  To honor and to reverence

  Thy colors crimson and blue.”

  Mr. Pugh had told me confidentially that these were lousy lyrics, but Mr. Babcock was all choked up. He finally conquered his emotions long enough to load us into his LaSalle and head for the town.

  “A beautiful, beautiful occasion,” Mr. Babcock kept saying. Then in a more wordly tone he said, “Well, off to the Old Coolidge House for dinner.”

  I caught my breath, then I said: “Gee, Mr. Babcock, maybe you’d rather take us to the hash wagon. It’s much more reasonable.”

  “No indeed, Patrick. I say hang the expense on a beautiful occasion like this. Besides, Eunice—Mrs. Babcock, that is—is waiting for us at the hotel.”

  Eunice was indeed waiting, and a little impatiently, in the lobby. The place was jammed with St. B. fathers and sons and the velvet rope was stretched across the dining-room door. I was in a frenzy. It was already dark outside and Auntie Mame could be expected back at any moment. “Golly, Mr. Babcock, it’s so crowded, and maybe Mrs. Babcock is hungry. Shouldn’t we try Ye Olde Greene Shutters Sweete Shoppe?” Mrs. Babcock gave me a wan smile, but Mr. Babcock was firm.

  “No, Patrick. We’ll just wait here. Besides, I have to go up to the Board Meeting in the Miles Standish Room right after dinner.” So we waited.

  Finally, by being needlessly unpleasant to the hostess, Mr. Babcock secured a table right in front of the door. I noticed a lot of jollier fathers treating their boys to steak and even wine. Not Mr. Babcock. He ordered four vegetable plates with poached egg and Sanka all around. Then he proceeded to take me to task for having so many demerits and for letting my grades slip during the last few weeks. I refrained from remarking that Junior had never got more than a C in anything except Deportment and Espionage and took the old boor’s diatribe manfully.

  Over the tapioca, Mrs. Babcock asked how Auntie Mame was. Mr. Babcock shuddered. Auntie Mame was a sore subject with him. “Well, I haven’t seen her since Christmas, Mrs. Babcock,” I began suavely, “but …”

  There was a crash out in front. I heard a shrill voice say: “Ito, you’ve hit that brand-new Cadillac!”

  “No Caddy-lac, missy, that LaSalle car.”

  “But I do feel funny,” Agnes’ voice rang out. “I don’t care what you say, Mrs. Burnside …”

  The color left my face, then I mustered my full forces just as I heard Agnes’ heavy footfall on the steps. “Yes, Mrs. Babcock,” I shouted, “I haven’t seen Auntie Mame since Christmas. She’s away. A good long way away. In Europe!”

  “Not so loud, Patrick,” Mr. Babcock said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Agnes,” Auntie Mame called from the darkness outside. “You’re just imagining all this. By my calculations you’re not due until Tuesday.” I heard the screen door slam and I caught a glimpse of Auntie Mame done up like a spy for the Austro-Hungarian Empire—all in black with veiling streaming out behind her.

  “But, Mrs. Bur …”

  Mr. Babcock went pale and half rose from the table, clutching his napkin so hard that his knuckles turned white. “I could swear I’d heard that …”

  In a flash I overturned the pot of Sanka onto his lap. There was a yelp of rage and pain just as Auntie Mame took a look into the dining room and went skittering up the stairs three at a time, dragging poor Agnes behind her.

  Well, Mr. Babcock gave me holy hell. He said I was a rude, insolent, thoughtless, stupid, inconsiderate young pup, but with the upbringing I’d had, what could one expect. Then he said he’d deduct the price of a new pair of trousers out of my trust fund. As far as I was concerned, he could have a whole wardrobe just as long as he got out of Apathy without
discovering who else was in the same hotel. He was even madder when he saw that a fender had been crushed on his brand-new car and I thanked God that there was no sign of Ito and Auntie Mame’s Rolls-Royce. Mr. Babcock drove Junior and me back to the school in a speechless rage. He snarled when I thanked him for a charming day, and then drove back to the hotel for his Board Meeting. Right after Mr. Babcock took off, Junior and I heard the terrible roar of Dr. Cheevey’s old car.

  “There goes the Nashcan,” I quipped gaily. “I guess old Cheevey’s going into town to get his ashes hauled after so much sweetness and light.”

  “He’s going to the Board Meeting at the hotel, same as Daddy is,” Junior said righteously. “Can’t you ever think of anything but sex?”

  “Not recently,” I said.

  After the heady excitement of Father and Son Day, the Dormitory was bustling with boys, and poor old Mr. Pugh was trying, in his calm, collected way, to get them into their rooms and their beds. He shot me a harried look of inquiry and I sent one back that said all was not quite lost. Then the telephone in his own room started ringing and he dashed off to answer it.

  Figuring that Agnes had had more than her share of fresh air for the day, I started undressing wearily when Mr. Pugh burst into the room. “Junior Babcock,” he said breathlessly, “go brush your teeth.”

  “But I already have, Mr. Pugh,” Junior said petulantly.

  “Well, brush them again. They look awful. Now march!”

  As soon as Junior was gone, Mr. Pugh grabbed me by both arms. “Quick,” he shouted, “get into your clothes. We’ve got to get to the hotel.”

  “Hotel? I can’t go near the hotel tonight. Mr. Babcock’s there. Old Cheevey’s there. The whole damned Board is there. Do you want me to get canned the last month of …”