House Party Page 4

  Mom and Granny and Gert had gone a long way, considering their disadvantages, but Claire was going higher. The trick about being a shopgirl was not being a shopgirl. Make up so you don't look made up. Leave your hair natural—or dye it to look more natural. Dress better than the customers. Speak better. Know more about the smart plays and restaurants and nightclubs. Don't toady to them and don't snub them. Don't go to them, let them come to you. Claire treated customers as though they were almost as good as she was. She greeted them with the cool indifference of a surgeon or a psychiatrist whose help they needed—a high priestess of high fashion who took dowdy women in hand and guided them to the true glory.

  And Claire had done a bang-up job on herself as well. The only way she could possibly be distinguished from the society girls who worked at the shop was that her clothes, her manners, her voice and her grammar were so good. It took a practiced eye to tell the difference.

  "Gee, doll, you look like a million," Miss Golden said, as Claire straightened her seams, smoothed her black linen sheath, drew on the spotless gloves—grooming was everything. "Say how's about I loan you a hat?"

  "Well . . ." Claire began. She'd planned her wardrobe right down to the last bobbypin, but a hat from Miss Golden's department carried with it a certain cachet.

  "C'mon down to the workroom, doll. I got something would be a knockout on you. Black horsehair cartwheel. Retails at eighty. Made it for Hildegarde."

  Going down in the service elevator, Claire, in a burst of gratitude, confided to Miss Golden that she was going to Pruitt's Landing with Paul Ames. Now she was glad she had. Gert's infallible memory for inconsequentials had provided Claire with some very consequential facts. Before they reached Custom Hats, Gert had given Claire a capsule portrait and rough credit rating of the whole clan.

  What Claire had hardly dared to suspect about Paul Ames was now all too wonderfully true. Claire considered Paul a kind of good-luck charm. Since she'd known him she'd not only met some very conservative people, but she'd been made a buyer. If she could be a success as young Miss Devine, what couldn't she become as young Mrs. Ames? A society name still went a long way in fashion. Visions of Claire Ames, Section Manager; Claire Ames, Cushion Coordinator, danced beneath Hildegarde's hat as Claire Devine studied her reflections in the triple mirror.

  "It's gawgeous, doll," Miss Golden cooed.

  "Gert, you're an angel! I'll bring it back first thing Tuesday."

  "Okeydoke, doll. Have fun," Miss Golden said with a motherly smile.

  Heads turned on the main floor as Claire strode toward the front door, and straight out to New York's most unusual automobile. The customers in the shop took in every detail. They knew that next year they would be wearing what Claire had on today.

  "Gee, Miss Golden," a salesgirl said, "Miss Devine's a darling."

  "She's a bitch!" Gert spat. "May I help you, Modom?"

  4: En Route

  Uncle Ned had been rather alarmed to learn that Paul's young lady worked in a shop, but when he saw Claire emerge onto Fifth Avenue, saw the doorman tip his cap deferentially, grasp Claire's smart suitcase and pitch it expertly up onto the luggage rack, he heaved a sigh of relief. Here was a girl with real style. Uncle Ned stole a glance at Paul and chuckled. My, but wasn't love written all over the boy's sensitive face! Paul was an odd one—brooding—rather like that poor young Rudi Hapsburg who got into that sordid mess at the Mayerling hunting lodge. Moody.

  "C-Claire," Paul was saying, "I'd like you to meet my great-uncle. Miss Devine, this is Mr, Pruitt."

  Nice manners, Paul. "Enchanté, my dear," Uncle Ned said, bending over Claire's hand. "Do let me help you up. You are to sit between Fang and me. Paul, you may take a jump seat. Here, boy, just put your bag up front with Sturgis. Ah, my dear," he said, turning to Claire, "you must forgive an old man's maunderings, but when I saw your lovely flower face beneath the splendor of that perfect hat, I could think only of my dear, dear friend, Princess Sophie Victoria of Nymphenburg, later Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, when I saw her first at Schloss Nymphenburg back in . . ." A ferocious honking of taxi horns cut short Uncle Ned's foray into the Almanach de Gotha.

  "How very charming of you," Claire said, smiling first radiantly at Uncle Ned and then at Paul.

  Fang snuffled at Claire's ear. She shuddered convulsively. Then she smiled at Uncle Ned. "I adore chows, Mr. Pruitt. They're so, so utterly distingué.”

  "Charming," Uncle Ned said, patting Claire's glove with his own. The car rolled majestically up Fifth Avenue. The next stop would be for Kathy Ames.

  Kathy had never felt so gawky and foolish and outclassed in her twenty-nine years of feeling gawky and foolish and outclassed. Sitting on the jump seat next to her brother, Paul—naturally slobbering old Fang had to sit on a comfortable seat—Kathy could feel her neck reddening under the scrutiny of Claire Devine.

  "I said where does this gentleman live, Katherine?" Uncle Ned repeated shrilly. He always found Kathy a perfect lump of a girl. No style whatever.

  "Oh, I—I'm sorry, Uncle Ned," Kathy quavered. "It's on East Fifty-eighth. Just off Sutton Place. I'll tell you the building when we get there, Sturgis. I'm terribly sorry."

  Kathy looked hopefully at Paul, but Paul wasn't looking at her. He was too enchanted with Claire Devine.

  So that's why I haven't heard from him for six solid weeks, Kathy thought. She twitched on the jump seat, trying unsuccessfully to arrange her skirts. In doing so she snagged a stocking and she was conscious of her petticoat peeping out. Kathy could cry. Just cry.

  Now let's see, Kathy said to herself. What are the things I've done wrong so far? One: Instead of making a queenly entrance, I was sitting out in front of the Save-the-Trees Society like the poor little match girl with my suitcase on one side of me and Mother's groceries on the other. Nothing quite so stylish as a paper sack of cheese and brioche, is there? Two: I threw my own baggage up on top, like a lady wrestler, instead of letting Sturgis do it. 'What are servants for, Katherine?' Damn Uncle Ned! If he's such a fine old gentleman, why can't he be decent to me instead of making me look like a hick in front of Paul's girl?

  Three: I was all smiles and gushes and blushes—like the old maid relative I practically am—when Paul introduced me to la Devine. Four: I tried to kiss Paul and Uncle Ned and set that nasty dog to barking. Five: My rear stuck out when I did it. Six: I'm dressed like a milkmaid. This little cotton looked so cute at Peck's sale. Cute! Nothing like whirly-girly skirts when you're almost six feet tall and twenty-nine-going-on-thirty and sitting on a jump seat. Why can't I look like she does?

  "What's the matter, Kathy old girl, you getting deaf?" Paul smiled. "I asked who you were bringing out over the Fourth."

  "Oh. Why, Paul, he's just a man I met at a cocktail party. His name is Stone. Manning Stone. He's quite nice, really." There, Kathy told herself, that sounded casual enough. That's the way Miss Devine would have said it

  "What's he do, Kath?"

  "Oh . . . Why, he—he writes. He works at home, mostly.”

  What's he do, indeed! He does something to me that no other man ever did before. He makes me feel tiny and short and girlish and cuddly because he's so very tall and worldly and masterful. He makes me feel beautiful because he's so very beautiful. He makes me feel like Cousin Felicia instead of the goalie on the Chapin hockey team, because he's such a gentleman. He makes me want to go out and buy a lot of dresses I can't afford—forty-dollar bathing suits and that sort of thing—and shoes with four-inch heels.

  I don't know one other thing about him except that he picked me up at a party and took me out to dinner and we've been seeing each other every night since and I cook for him and he wants to be my lover, not my pal—like all those other boys—and I think he wants to marry me.

  Paul, Paul, can't you hear what I'm saying? Can't you feel it? Manning Stone. M-A-double N-I-N-G Stone. Paul, listen to me!

  "Manning Stone? Manning Stone, Katherine?" Uncle Ned was saying. "Funny, I could swear . . . We
ll, makes no difference. One runs into so many names in eighty-odd years, doesn't one, my dear Claire? I may call you Claire?"

  "I want you to, Mr. Pruitt."

  And, Paul, Kathy heard her brain shouting, he loves me, he really does. And I want everything to be perfect this weekend. I want you to help me; pretend that I'm popular and sought-after and can't fight the suitors off. And keep Manning away from your siren and from Felicia and get boys to cut in on me at the club dance and . . .

  "Katherine, have you gone daft as well as deaf? I say, here we are on Fifty-eighth Street. Now, which building? Honestly, child, you ought to try standing on your head fifteen minutes a day. I do and so do a lot of women far more distinguished than you can ever hope to be. My darling Elsie Mendl did right up to the day she died. So do Elizabeth Arden and Frances Bolton and . . ."

  "Here it is, Uncle Ned. Here it is, Sturgis. Stop. I'll run in and ring the bell and . . ."

  "You will do no such thing, child. Do you fancy that I pay Sturgis simply to sit there as an ornament? Sturgis, ring for a Mr. Stone."

  After a protracted argument about who would pay the twenty-five cent toll at the Triborough Bridge—everyone but Claire had insisted upon doing it—the Hotchkiss rolled serenely onto the Grand Central Parkway and passed La Guardia Field at a sedate thirty-five miles an hour.

  All, however, was not serene within the confines of the Hotchkiss. To begin with, the car was badly crowded. The luggage rack was piled high with Uncle Ned's baggage, with Sturgis', with Kathy's and Claire's. Paul thought little of clothes and carried only a zipper bag, which he had tossed into the front seat.

  But Manning Stone did not believe in traveling light. Although his clothing might be called the Wardrobe of Tomorrow, rather than the Style of King Edward, he was not unlike Ned Pruitt when it came to packing for a weekend.

  A Mrs. Helen de Forest Cotton Lee had presented him with a set of pigskin luggage some years ago and it was too beautiful not to use. He had taken it to Europe once with Mrs. Laura Romeyne Gray Richardson Anderson, again with Mrs. Mary Arnold Sykes Cahan, once more with Mrs. Louise Frith Stickney Tanner, who had filled it with clothes from Saville Row before the sad termination of their friendship, and most recently with Mrs. Barbara Fargo Cayton Hooton. The four pigskin bags, beautifully saddle-soaped, now sat in the front seat, snugly between Paul and Sturgis. Manning Stone had taken Paul's jump seat and sat holding one of Kathy's perspiring hands and chatting coolly with Claire and Uncle Ned.

  Manning Stone had been of mixed emotions when he peered through the blinds of the apartment Mrs. Hooton had decorated for him and recognized the familiar Hotchkiss standing out in front.

  He'd first seen the Hotchkiss, with Uncle Ned and Lady Mendl aboard, at Cap d'Antibes right after the war when he and Mrs. Lee were summering there. Then he and Mrs. Anderson—dear old redheaded Laura—had nearly been hit by it on the Via Veneto in Rome. He remembered the scent of carnations, Mrs. Cahan, and the Piazza delle Auto at Portofino in close connection with the car. And more recently, Manning and Mrs. Tanner had laughed about the car in San Sebastian that lovely summer of 1951, when Spain and Manning were still inexpensive enough to fit in with her plans and travelers' checks. He had last looked down upon Uncle Ned and the Hotchkiss from a window in the Paris Ritz before that unfortunate misunderstanding severed his connection with Mrs. Hooton.

  Now he was in the car and fairly certain that Uncle Ned had no recollection of ever having seen him.

  Well, you could have knocked Manning over with a leaf of lettuce when he finally tumbled to the fact that plain Kathy Ames was related to that indestructible old playboy, Ned Pruitt. He let himself get just a trifle more British than had been his custom with Kathy.

  "Ectu'lly I'm quite glad not to be abroad this summer. It seems that ev'ryone's gaoing, and while I am an Ameddican, I'd just as soon wait until all the—well, yew know—tourist class comes back. I really thought to make reservations for, say, Octaober, althaough I've not done it yet. Yew knaow what I mean, daon't you?"

  "Oh, quite," Claire said. She wondered what Europe was like.

  "Ah, dear boy," Uncle Ned sighed, "October in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, how wise you are! I recall a glorious autumn there with dear, dead Prince Karl of Schleswig-Holstein and Lotte and . . .”

  Please, God, Kathy breathed, clutching Manning's beautiful hand. Please don't let him go in October—not without me. And make him stop looking at her and talking to her. Make him remember it's me he loves . . . I mean I. Please.

  Fang was becoming restive. His nose twitched. His violet tongue passionately swiped Claire's green eyelid. She shivered.

  "Likes you, dear girl," Uncle Ned shrilled. "I could tell it straight off. Great judges of character, chows."

  "Oh, and I love him!" Claire said.

  "Great judges. He hates Katherine. Here, dear boy, stroke him.”

  Manning's impeccable hand gingerly fondled the chow's mane and Fang's fluffy tail pounded the seat ecstatically. Fang licked Manning's hand, leaving his palm a gluey mass of saliva.

  "Yes, great judges of character. They know their friends." Uncle Ned was trying to keep his spirits buoyed up. He'd been sick to his stomach this morning, terribly sick. Another old friend had died; he'd been informed by the Knickerbocker Trust that his capital was being used up at an alarming rate; and as a final blow his landlord had sent a registered letter telling him that the New York apartment—which he had kept for sixty years—was to be torn down sixty days hence to make way for a new Rabadab building. That had brought on the sick spell. Now he must be gay. He must bring back his youth, enchant this young audience of enchanting young people. "My dears, did I ever tell you of the time I was in Marienbad with King Edward and . . ."

  Nor were things any better in the front seat. Paul was in a hot rage of resentment. Why do I always give people the best seats? Why do I always let people out of elevators first? Why the hell did I come up here and let that phony of Kathy's hog Claire? Jesus, the things I wanted to tell her on the way out here. I wanted to show her those cheese-box Levittowns—and tell her my plans for putting up good houses where people can live better for less money. I wanted to show her how we could live and fix it for other people to live and now I'm up here with mouldy old Sturgis and she's in back getting the real one-two from that creampuff of Kathy's. Jesus, it's all turning out like a nightmare. I wish to God I was dead. And he scowled furiously.

  Sturgis sat painfully erect at the wheel, suffocating in his bottle-green livery. His puttees chafed his lean shanks. His head ached and sweated under the peaked cap. Spots swam before his eyes. I'm gettin' too old for long car trips like this, he thought. I was never hired as no showfer, anyways, I can't stand these other cars and this sun beatin' down on me and these satchils pressin' inta me side. I'm a sick man. I'm sicker'n Mr. Pruitt—even if he did have a bad spell this morning. I'm almost as old as him and he's gonna outlive me. He'll bury me. Even if I am supposed to be his sole heir he'll bury me. An' the money's all gone anyways. He's a poor man, nearly. He'll be livin' on my savings long after I'm dead 'n' gone. I can't hardly see to drive this old . . . "Oh, Gawd!"

  The Hotchkiss swerved wildly, narrowly avoiding another car. It hit a soft shoulder on the road, swayed and righted itself.

  "Merciful heavens, Sturgis," Uncle Ned shrieked, "do you want to kill us all!”

  At that moment the electric roofs went into action. With the sound of a Murphy bed opening, the roof above the back seat unfolded and crashed down over the heads of Uncle Ned, Claire and Fang. The cover above Sturgis and Paul slid out with a roar, smashed against the windshield and slid back again with a thump.

  The two electrical roofs opened. They closed. They opened. They closed. They opened. They closed. Fang barked wildly. Claire shuddered. Kathy laughed hysterically and burst into tears on Manning's shoulder. Uncle Ned crossed himself and screamed "Damn you, Sturgis! Damn and double-damn you!"

  "There, there, darling," Manning whispered—nothing like a man in a cris
is.

  "Nothin' I can do about it, Mr. Pruitt," Sturgis whined. "It's them bloody batteries again. Well jest haf to keep a-goin' like this,"

  "Jesus," Paul said aloud, "Jesus." Fang continued barking.

  With the two roofs opening and closing, opening and closing, the Hotchkiss turned toward the Jericho Turnpike and continued its eccentric peregrination in the direction of Pruitt's Landing.

  5: Arrival

  Pruitt's Landing is one of the few towns on Long Island that is still "unspoiled." It is so old that its main street is still called High Street and elms still arch across it. It is quaint without being cute, authentic without being restored. The old families see to that. All the buildings that are not white clapboard with green trim are red brick with white trim. Any new structure that goes up in the village proper is okayed by a board of the most rigid traditionalists. No neon sign hisses and flickers. No billboard mars its rustic charm. It is off the main highway. Only the elect know that it exists, and the only weekend trippers who enter its precincts are those well-off enough to pay the stiff rates at its one resting and dining place, where a chaste sign reads:

  THE OLDE PRUITT'S LANDING HOSTELRY

  Eftablished

  1 7 3 7

  Breakfast Luncheon Cocktails Dinner

  Guefts Accommodated

  By Refervation Only

  Ordinarily the silence of High Street is undisturbed except for the plump of the under-inflated tires of large station wagons or sleek convertibles, the rattle of pearls, or the modulated cadences of a well-bred "Good morning." This afternoon, however, the elm trees quivered to the sound of a motorcycle siren.

  Bryan Ames knew that the jig was up. He pulled over to the curb and halted resignedly in front of Betty Cannon's Little Corner Book Shop. The motorcycle screeched to a stop behind him. The local policeman, unused to an opportunity to arrest anyone, trembled with excitement as he removed his gauntlets, hunted for a pencil and his pristine book of traffic tickets. "Well, Barney Oldfield," the officer growled inexpertly out of one corner of his mouth, "where's the fire?"