By the time Ito had got lost three times in Beirut and finally headed for the foothills, Auntie Mame was feeling quite peppy again. “Ah, this mountain air,” she said, taking a healthy swig from her brandy flask. “The cedars of Lebanon! What’s the name of this place the doctor’s sending me to, darling?”
“It’s a town called Shufti. It’s up in the mountains near Sofar.”
“Ah, the simple life! Living in a little adobe house and sharing our bread and cheese with the Lebanese goatherds. Would you like a burnoose, darling?”
“I think it’s a bit more elaborate than that, Auntie Mame. The doctor said it was a resort town with a club and a big hotel.”
Shufti was the next town up the mountain, and the villa the doctor had lent Auntie Mame was a simple little copy of the Petit Trianon just across the road from the club. It had a pretty walled garden behind it, adjoining the gardens of two neighboring villas. The one to the right was a great, sprawling, Moorish mass, while the one to the left was smaller, more in keeping with the Lebanese architecture, and just slightly going to seed. A gothic script sign in front of the Moorish house read “Villa Mont d’Or” while a brass plate on the other house proclaimed it as belonging to “Mr. and Mrs. Humphrey R. Cantwell.” As I helped Auntie Mame out of the car, I noticed that eyes were peering at us through the blinds of both villas.
THE NEXT DAY, WITH AUNTIE MAME SETTLED DELIcately onto a chaise longue and able, at last, to take a little nourishment in the way of a weak gin and lime, I set out to explore the village of Shufti. Its one main street was a fairly squalid Arab affair with a couple of cafés, a laundry or two, a variety store, and a Roxy theater where Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler were appearing in Forty-second Street along with Installment Nine of a Tarzan serial. But, ah, the banlieues of Shufti! A pretty mountain town within easy reach of both Beirut and Damascus, Shufti had attracted quite a crew of conspicuous spenders—Lebanese, Syrian, Egyptian, Turkish—plus some official French families and a smattering of rich Greeks, Americans, and English, whose summer houses all looked more or less like the Brighton Pavilion. Shufti, with its air of great opulence, its Arabian Nights villas, its unlimited supply of almost free servants, was the kind of place that looked—at first glance—as though you’d be happy to settle down there and vegetate forever. But after a couple of closer glimpses and a few afternoons at the European Union Club, you began to realize that you’d be bored to the point of suicide after a week of its petty, silly, provincial society.
The European Union Club was a perfect example of the lengths to which French and English colonials will go to create a little corner of home in a distant land and end up with a great big nothing. The club had once been the summer house of a rich Damascus merchant—an airy, lacy, cool pavilion set down in the most glorious section of the Lebanese mountains. But it hadn’t taken the Europeans long to louse it up so that it had all the worst features of Liverpool and Toulouse. Parts of it looked like the Chivas Regal ads. Chintz held sway, embellished by antimacassars and horrid, florid French lamps. The smoking room was a vision in painted-on pine paneling and dusty heads of wild animals which had been destroyed by the more athletic members. France had been victorious in the dining room. The tables had been embellished with toothpick containers, trenchers of soiled salt, napkin rings, and grimy, set bouquets of bead flowers in a land where the most exotic blooms grew like weeds. The walls were upholstered in mustard cut velvet, and the grittiest curtains ever hung—brocade, over silk, over dirty lace, over net—resolutely shut out all light and any suggestion that a beautiful garden flourished just beyond. The food was English. Britannia ruled the billiard room with its electric log burning cheerlessly in a fake fireplace, its Tottenham Court Road Tudor reproductions, and its standardized sporting prints (although the French had cannily sabotaged that maneuver by hanging them too high). And in the bar even the good old U.S.A. had made its power felt by the installation of a hideous jukebox that both bubbled and changed colors and a cigarette machine.
The entrance hall was pretty much unchanged, save for a green baize bulletin board bristling with announcements. Most of the notices to the membership in general were written in both English and French, but there were lots of private little appeals which showed, pretty well, how the club was divided. There were such things as:
Will anyone finding a garnet brooch please return same to Lady Belcher. Great sentimental value.
Thé-dansant, le Samedi 19, 17 heures. Achmed Maloof et son Orchestre ‘Swing’ du le Kit-Kat Club (Beirut). 50 piastres.
Certain thoughtless junior members have been using the Card Room as a gathering place where, heedless of those trying to play bridge, they have talked in loud tones of voice, laughed, giggled, etc. This infringement shall cease immediately.
Mrs. Humphrey Cantwell.
Some irreverent Francophile had penciled “Merde” at the bottom of this.
Tambola Every Wednesday—20 hours.
Tambola Tous les Mercredis—20 heures.
Any Members interested in forming a group to present the plays of Noël Coward will please contact Mme. Mont d’Or—mornings after ten.
Sari Mont d’Or.
The penmanship was so high-styled that I could barely read it.
Any wishing to accompany Mr. Cantwell and myself to the ruins of Palmyra on Friday fortnight may do so in exchange for paying for the gasoline.
Mrs. Humphrey Cantwell.
Another irreverent member had written “You look like the ruins of Herculaneum.”
Junior Tennis Tournament—Mixed Doubles.
Seymour Mont d’Or, Captain Men’s Team.
Lucia Cantwell, Captain Ladies’ Team.
Sign below.
Certain members and their guests have appeared at the swimming pool indecently garbed. It is to be remembered that the European Union Club is a family organization.
Mrs. Humphrey Cantwell.
Whatever had been sketched under Mrs. Cantwell’s signature this time had been thoroughly scratched out.
Members interested in learning the newest Latin-American dances, please contact Mme. Mont d’Or—mornings after ten.
Sari Mont d’Or.
Again, Mme. Mont d’Or’s chichi, sway-backed handwriting—the I’s dotted with huge circles, the T’s crossed with sweeping diagonals. Her paper was pale green, each sheet stamped with a huge white coat of arms.
I was able to see from the bulletin board that Mesdames Cantwell and Mont d’Or just about ran the club.
A SERVANT IN A RED FEZ USHERED ME TO THE MEN’S dressing room, where another servant helped me to undress and get into my bathing shorts. I could have done it myself, but the club seemed to have more servants than members. While I was wondering if my suit was ample enough to pass Mrs. Cantwell’s inspection, a young man padded out of the showers singing “I Get a Kick out of You” in a melodious baritone. Two servants began toweling him dry. Then he noticed me and stretched out his hand. “Hello,” he said, in a pure American accent. “My name’s Seymour, but I’m usually called Sammy.”
“How do you do?” I said. “My name is . . .”
“I already know. We’re next-door neighbors. Don’t worry. Whenever anybody new comes to Shufti the whole town knows about it.”
He was dark and well built and only a few years older than I. About twenty, I guessed.
Chatting amiably about nothing in particular, we strolled out through the riotous garden to the big, circular mosaic pool. Except for two or three dozen servants in white night-gowns and red fezes, we were the only people there. Fifty empty cabanas flapped idly in the languid mountain breeze. The pool was spring fed, cold and clear. Sammy—or Seymour—dived in first and cut the surface of the water with long masterful strokes. But he got out even quicker when we were joined by a pretty blonde girl in a white Lastex bathing suit.
“This is Lucia Cantwell,” he said, almost possessively, and his eyes caressed her tenderly during the introduction. Well, I didn’t blame him. She was quite a dish
. She was also an American and about eighteen.
“I’m awfully glad to meet you,” Lucia said sweetly. “We live next door to you. Mother’s been waiting hourly for you and your aunt to arrive. I expect she’ll descend on you at any moment now. And of course she’ll expect you both at her Tuesdays.”
I was saying some fatuous social thing like How Nice, when I noticed that Lucia had placed her hand absently on Sammy’s big chest. It was a funny innocent sort of gesture and one that held, for me at least, a world of meaning. He gave her a look that implied that he’d much rather be underwater with her than making idle chitchat with me. And then Lucia Cantwell came to, more or less, and said, “Last one in’s a club president!”
The three of us disported ourselves in the water like dolphins for I don’t know how long. From time to time I noticed that the population around the pool was increasing—not that anybody ever bothered to get wet; they just came and sat in front of their cabanas, occasionally clapping their hands for one of the club servants to bring lemonade or Shandy Punches. Sitting was almost a career in Shufti.
But just as Sammy was climbing the diving tower to demonstrate his jackknife, the dreariest of them all came marching down to the pool and called, “Lucia! Lee-ew-sha! Mother wants you, dear.”
“Oh, oh!” Lucia said, coloring slightly. “Now we’re in for it. I wish you’d come with me. Please.”
From up on the diving board, Sammy was shouting, “Now here goes the famous . . .” But the words died on his lips as he saw Lucia marching toward the cabana marked Cantwell.
“Mother,” Lucia said, pushing me forward into the clutches of the old dragon, “this is our new neighbor, Patrick Dennis.”
“Howjudu?” Mrs. Cantwell said in her Madame Chairman voice. She had the smile of a shark. “I sent our cards around to your aunt this morning.” Again the mechanical display of fangs. “She is one of the Georgia Burnsides, is she not? Very old stock.”
Mrs. Cantwell—her first name was Lucy, although one never thought of her as having anything so intimate as a first name—was a tall, rawboned, high-rumped American matron of uncertain age, proudly dowdy in a flowered summer dress that practically screamed Lane Bryant, a slightly battered Panama hat, and white nurse’s oxfords.
“Dew sit down,” she said. Again the man-eating smile. “Lucia, dear, dew run up to the lounge and fetch Mother’s scarf.” I felt that the scarf was going to be batik. “That’s such a nice swimming suit,” Mrs. Cantwell said to me. “Modest. Not like some of the costumes we see on Certain People,” she added, looking pointedly at Sammy’s somewhat briefer trunks. “I hope that you’ll set some sort of Good Example with, um, Certain People who have not had, um, Our Advantages.”
I didn’t know quite what she was getting at, but I resolved to cut at least two inches off every bathing suit I owned. I was even contemplating a rhinestone in my naval when Mrs. Cantwell fixed me with a steely gaze and said, “Since you’re new here at the club, I think it’s only fair to warn you that there are, um, Certain People well worth avoiding. I mean I couldn’t help noticing that you were mixing with, well, one of our more Undesirable Members. You look like a very intelligent, well-bred young man, and, well, ‘A word to the wise . . .’ ”
I hadn’t the faintest idea what the old biddy was talking about since the only people I’d met were her daughter and the boy named Sammy-Seymour.
“Of course my Lucia is Very Democratic. Our Position here, you know. But it isn’t wise to get in with the Wrong Crowd. And when I saw you being such Good Friends with . . .” Again the oblique glance across the pool at Sammy.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t even know his name,” I said.
“I thought you didn’t or you never would have allowed an Intimacy such as . . .” Then she lowered her voice. “It’s Seymour Mont d’Or.”
“Oh yes,” I said absently.
“You do speak French?”
“Enough.”
“Then why don’t you simply translate, young man?”
“Mont d’or; mountain of gold,” I said, quite mystified.
“Or?” she said with a dramatic pause. “Goldberg.” She simpered hideously.
My mouth dropped open.
“I knew you’d be horrified,” she said with a vicious little V-shaped smirk. I was horrified, but for entirely different reasons. “Now we won’t say anything more about it, shall we? Here comes Lucia with my scarf.” It was batik.
Mrs. Cantwell settled down to getting things established. In her circuitous way, she found out where Auntie Mame lived, what her maiden name had been, where she came from, where I had gone to school, where I was going to college, the names of boys I knew in America and who their people had been. Looking back, I doubt that Mrs. Cantwell was either very clever or very subtle in her probing, but I had never before met anyone who operated that way. Midway through the interrogation, I realized what the woman was up to and I had a wild urge to do just what Auntie Mame would have done—to tell a pack of extravagant lies that would have upstaged Mrs. Cantwell forever: “Auntie Mame’s maiden name was Bourbon and I’m the morganatic son of Franz Joseph and we live in the Taj Mahal and I’m only allowed to play with princes of the blood and my aunt’s eunuch.” Or else to put her to flight by saying that Auntie Mame ran a whorehouse in Paducah, that my father had been Al Capone’s finger man, and that my grandfather before him was actually a receiver of stolen goods while pretending to keep a delicatessen in Jersey City. Alas, I was too honest and too late. I was regrettably established as both genteel and gentile.
Secure in the knowledge that Auntie Mame and I were All Right, Mrs. Cantwell then took over with an endless monologue which gave me an exhaustive glimpse of her curriculum vitae, her genealogy, her connections in America, and her friends all over the world. “I was a Lathrop of Lowell . . . my father, the bishop . . . when Mr. Cantwell was at Harvard . . . so difficult to be out here in the East and not Bring Lucia Out Properly . . . my cousins the Morris Redfields . . . my brother, Sturgis, who is known for his great love of animals . . . the Colonial Dames . . . the Mayflower Descendants . . . Mr. Cantwell’s deep absorption in archaeology . . . one must be so careful about whom one meets out here . . . my debut dress from Worth . . . but Mr. Cantwell really prefers running his boys’ school—not for the money, of course, it’s more a hobby . . . my grandmother’s lovely, lovely opals.” Lucia looked embarrassed and occasionally glanced over to where Sammy Mont d’Or was splashing dispiritedly with a couple of frankly plain French girls. I was embarrassed for Lucia and furious with myself for being trapped by this old dragon.
It also struck me that Mrs. Cantwell was fiendishly possessive. She spoke of My Tuesdays, My View, My Mountain, My People, My Little Native Seamstress—so it wasn’t Lane Bryant, after all—My Charity, My Drugstore, My Clever Little French Doctor. It seemed that quite commonplace things were elevated to the extraordinary by virtue of Mrs. Cantwell’s ownership, patronage, or proximity. As she rambled on and on, punctuating each dismal sally with a series of smug, mechanistic smiles, simpers, smirks, and moues, I caught Lucia looking more and more longingly at young Seymour Mont d’Or. I wondered, absently, if they were sleeping together, then I decided that Mrs. Cantwell would never let the poor girl out of her sight long enough for more than a quick handshake.
“Of course Mr. Cantwell takes only a very few boys, and boys from the very best families out here.” Mrs. Cantwell had launched into a description of her husband’s dreary day school down in Beirut, which—to hear her tell it—put Eton and Harrow in a class with Father Flanagan’s Boys’ Town. “He takes some sons of French officials, but no Catholics and certainly no . . .”
There was a silent fanfaronade, every head at the pool turned, and there, bigger than life, was a woman I took to be the Queen of Sheba. She was thin and stately, standing almost seven feet tall in thick cork sandals and a towering turban of scarlet silk. She was wearing a silver damask bathing suit and she was hung with rubies which, distressingly enough, wer
e all real. “Yoo hoo!” she called, waving at the pool in general, “ Ça va, chérie! Bon jour, mon Capitain! Good afternoon, Lady Belcher! Seymour, chéri, bring maman a cushion, darling. There’s a pet!”
“Who . . .” I began.
“That,” Mrs. Cantwell said with a knowing glance, “is Mrs., um, Mont d’Or.”
I watched Mrs. Mont d’Or seat herself on a cushion, clap her hands, order “un petit café noir” and grandly open a back issue of Vogue—Paris edition—while her diamonds and rubies glittered ominously in the sunshine.
“The Levantine invasion,” Mrs. Cantwell said mincingly.
“Please, Mother . . .” Lucia began.
“Come, Lucia,” Mrs. Cantwell said, rising haughtily, “I think we’ll take this young man home for tea.”
“I—I can’t. Thank you very much,” I said, desperate to get away from this dreadful old bore. “My aunt isn’t well. I promised her that I’d be home. I’m really late now. Excuse me.”
WHEN I GOT HOME, AUNTIE MAME WAS JUST GETTING up from a nap. I saw a lot of visiting cards and two big, pale-green crested envelopes waiting on the tray in the hall. The cards read, “Mrs. Humphrey Cantwell,” “Miss Lucia Cantwell,” “Mr. Humphrey Cantwell,” and, for little old me, I guess, another “Mr. Humphrey Cantwell.”
“Here, Auntie Mame,” I said, handing them to her. “You got some cards.”
“Cards? My God, it’s a royal flush. It’s like Buffalo in the nineties. I’m surprised she didn’t turn down corners or something. Who is this Cantwell woman, anyhow?”
I started to tell her, but she was opening a big green envelope that I knew was from Mrs. Mont d’Or. “Oh, dear,” she said, reading aloud. “Monsieur et Madame. H. Jules Mont d’Or vous prie d’assister à diner ce soir à huit heures. Le smoking.”
Around the World With Auntie Mame Page 23
