Matters of Honor

by Louis Begley

  I was right not to go to the restaurant, he added. Your cousin George was nice enough to leave me alone with Margot the better part of an hour. He didn’t need my presence at dinner. She was his date, right? The evening was his. Anyway, that will be the pattern. I might as well get used to it.

  I must have looked puzzled. It’s simple, Henry said, she’s exactly the sort of girl they all want to take out, those men at the party, and George is exactly the sort of man she thinks should take her out. Maybe she even expects someone even fancier. I don’t qualify. On the other hand, she told me that she hasn’t got much to say to them, not that they would necessarily want to listen. So we can talk to each other. That’s my role—she made it very clear.

  I wouldn’t have predicted for Henry a role as Margot’s confidant. In all other respects, that was also my assessment. It led me to think that he should stop wasting time on his Jazz Age Penthesilea and also on the dogs he had been consoling himself with. There were lots of attractive girls at Radcliffe who would be happy to have him. Some might even be Jewish. Of course, I didn’t tell him any of that. Instead I complimented him on his realism and willingness to accept the situation with good cheer.

  Good cheer? he answered. Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve been dealt a lousy hand. I know it, and I don’t find anything in it to be cheerful about. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not giving up on Margot. This is a tactical retreat in a long campaign. For now, my plan is to be her friend. Whatever happens and whatever she does with the others, I’ll bide my time.

  That statement didn’t reassure me. I had taken a good look at Margot and the other girls at Mario’s. If he really thought that in time he would be able to get Margot away from the Georges and Marios of this world, he was only setting himself up for more disappointments. I knew I was changing my tune, but that couldn’t be helped. In fact, I was beginning to think that perhaps Archie and I had made a mistake arranging the chance encounter at Mario’s as though it were just another undergraduate lark. At the same time, something made me go on; I couldn’t stop meddling. I asked whether he shouldn’t put the matter to a test by asking her for a date.

  She’d send me packing, he said. That would spoil everything.

  Why? Do you think that she is an anti-Semite? I asked him point-blank. Is that the problem? Because if she is, what would make her change?

  Isn’t everybody? he fired back.

  I don’t think so, I replied. I’m not, Archie isn’t, there are lots of people who don’t care whether you’re Jewish.

  I’m not so sure, Henry said. Anyway, you haven’t been put to any test. Sure, you and Archie don’t seem to mind having had a Jew foisted on you. But in other contexts, who is to say? You seem positively fixated on the Jewish question. In changed circumstances it might turn out that you care a lot. Anyway, I do know that there are Jews and Jews, and that some Jews are acceptable for most purposes, except to real nuts, and others aren’t. Margot’s father and Margot are class A Jews. I’m class B—for the time being. I want to move to A.

  Though a bit put off by his hostility, I wished him luck.

  In the meantime, I watched him go about being Margot’s best friend and must say I admired his eerie efficiency. I doubt that a single day went by without their meeting for coffee or tea at Hayes-Bickford between morning classes as well as in the afternoon, after leaving the library. He avoided Leavitt & Pierce’s because there you had to sit at the counter, so that real privacy was excluded. Besides, it was where “they” hung out, the golden lads and lassies. Most days, Margot and he read side by side at the Widener. When she had to use the Radcliffe library, needing a book on reserve there, he would wait outside and walk her back to her dormitory. Occasionally, they went to the movies. George wasn’t much of a cinema buff and, what with crew training and homework—he was a diligent student who read slowly, took careful notes on what he read, and fretted about deadlines for handing in papers—he was usually pressed for time. Margot, I gathered, worked quickly but without much application. According to Henry, she had been so well prepared by her school in New York that she found no need to take much trouble over her courses. I would have liked to know what Henry and Margot actually talked about. Books and coursework? Was he more open with her about Poland and the war? He gave no hint of that, but I did learn that George was not the only man who took Margot out on what Henry called real dates. There was also a Belgian at the business school, a rich fellow given to rushing to New York whenever Margot went home. He is an international playboy, Henry explained, manifestly parroting Margot’s words, not a typical business school grind. George was aware of the Belgian and bore his attentions to Margot stoically. Tolerant equanimity seemed, indeed, to be George’s hallmark in his relationship with Margot. Henry told me, with needless indiscretion, that Margot had explained the strict limits on liberties George could take with her person, and that George had placidly accepted them. Perhaps crew’s rigorous training regime and the saltpeter which, according to rumor, was added to the special diet fed to top athletes facilitated his acceptance. Henry seemed to know that the Belgian pressed his suit with greater fire. George was also notably easygoing about Henry and, at least according to Margot, it was George who had come up with the idea of inviting him to the New Year’s party at the Lenox Driving Club. Your invitation, Henry assured me, was also something George had thought of on his own. I had no reason to doubt the accuracy of the latter statement, since he had spoken about inviting me already at Mario’s party. And yet that harmless comment provoked in me an ugly movement of jealousy—I considered that Henry belonged to me as did also the connection with George and the Berkshires, and momentarily I disliked the alliance that had sprung up between those two without my active participation. I wondered how much Margot’s influence had had to do with the invitation to Henry. A lot, I was inclined to think, although George had spoken to me favorably about Henry soon after they met at Mario’s. That roommate of yours with the funny accent is all right, he said. Margot thinks he’s remarkable. I acquiesced in both judgments. You know, I think he may be a Jew, George pursued. Seeing no reason to feign ignorance, I said he was. So he’s a Jew, George repeated pensively. I didn’t take that as an indication that he was taken aback by the information. It just took a moment to make sense of the new fact. The parents won’t mind, he continued. He’s very polite, and he can talk to Mother about books. Thinking of my father’s strictures about Jews at our own country club and old Gummy’s views, I asked George how he thought Henry would go over with the seniors at the very grand Driving Club. It was not by choice that my parents weren’t members there. I don’t care what those mummies think, he replied. The parents don’t either. I absorbed George’s statement in silence. Once again he showed himself to be a far more decent fellow than I had imagined. There was another aspect of his reply that was worthy of note: clearly setting yourself against the opinions of others was easier if you were rich and occupied an impregnable social position.

  Like Henry, I had unexpectedly every reason to think well of George. He followed up on what I had feared might have been perfunctory party talk and invited me the very next day to lunch at the Chinese restaurant on Oxford Street. We began to see each other regularly, especially as we were taking the same English literature course, and he had trouble with the required weekly essay. Often, he wanted to see me to ask for my help with what he had written. Otherwise, we gossiped about the Berkshires. We knew the same people, although sometimes from different perspectives. I decided I had better tell him what Mr. Hibble had said about my adoption. George shook his head and said, Hibble is a lunatic. I mean senile. That’s what Father thinks, and he should know. Hibble does all the legal work for the family.

  I told George that my father would be glad to hear about Mr. Standish’s opinion of Mr. Hibble, but my parents had confirmed the story. It had to be true. George fell silent. I am trying to think this out, he said after a while. There is something fishy about it, my grandfather stepping in like that. And setting u
p a trust! I think I see it. My sisters are older than I am and you are a year younger. That makes it simple: by the time you were born, Mother and Father had been married for six or seven years. Grandfather wasn’t more than sixty-five, maybe younger, and he was in fine health. Hey, you might be my uncle! My sisters’ and my uncle! Unless you’re our half brother. Mother always says that Father was wild before they got married. Perhaps he hadn’t stopped. How about that?

  I told George that for a while after the meeting with Mr. Hibble I had thought of very little except the adoption, and the conclusion I’d come to was that there was no reason to believe anything of that sort. Abortions were easy to arrange, I said, if you had money. That’s what would have been done in your family. More than likely some young woman your grandfather knew—perhaps an employee at the bank, perhaps the daughter of an employee, perhaps a servant, perhaps the daughter of a friend—anyway, some girl he knew got into trouble and it was too late to fix it. So your grandfather stepped in generously and solved the girl’s problem. At the same time he did his nephew and the nephew’s wife a great big favor.

  Could be, said George. But the family resemblance?

  I replied that it extended to half of the Anglo-Scottish population of the Berkshires, there being nothing especially distinctive about the Standish looks. In any case, he could be sure of one thing: it wasn’t his father. He had never paid attention to me, one way or the other, and although he seemed to know who I was, I would bet he couldn’t remember my name.

  We agreed that we wouldn’t be solving the riddle. When I suggested that it might be better not to know the answer, he said that was all right with him, but he might start thinking of me as a kid brother anyway—it seemed more natural than uncle. We also agreed on a point of practical importance: we would not mention our conversation to anyone, his parents and sisters and my parents included. He was very solemn about it, which was a relief, and not only because I had given my word to Mr. Hibble. Speaking to George was justified; it was only fair if we were to be friends. But neither of us wanted to make trouble with his parents—if they really didn’t know—or mine, or get the Berkshire gossip mill started.

  THE SUN HAD SET by the time the train finally pulled into the station. Only one door opened. We ran toward it to help Margot down the steps and take her bags. Yes, she was very beautiful, even if her nose was too big for her face, and she was doing her best to be pleasant. During the few minutes it took us to get to the Standish house, she managed to pet George, who was driving, to wink encouragingly at Henry, and to distinguish me as a special friend, all the while commenting lazily on the Norman Rockwell winter landscape. I concluded that the air of boredom I had found so off-putting at Mario’s party might have been only her cocktail party pose.

  The Standish parents welcomed us at the door. I refused Mrs. Standish’s offer of tea: if I was to make it home to Lenox to change and back in time for a drink before the party, I had better leave at once. My, my, she replied, perhaps you’re right; the roads are so very slippery. Do give Jack’s and my greetings to your dear parents. We did so like their Christmas card!

  I couldn’t have cared less about the road conditions and in truth didn’t need very much time to get into my dinner jacket, but I felt I had to get away and clear my head before facing Mrs. Standish, Mr. Standish, George’s two married sisters, and the sisters’ husbands, a New York banker and a New York lawyer. Like everyone in the county my age or younger, I had always found Mr. Standish overbearing and threatening. According to George, that was only self-defense. In reality, his father was gentle and very shy; the real tiger was his mother. That could well be, but in my present situation appearances were more important than some hidden reality. I preferred Mrs. Standish’s quiet eighteenth-century face and its expression of profound fatigue mixed with sympathy. Moreover, she didn’t just remember my name. She actually seemed to notice me. In fact, the last time I saw her, at the final afternoon concert of the Tanglewood season after my return from France, she had amazed me by asking that I call her May, which was something I couldn’t bring myself to do, any more than to call her Cousin May, which my mother had recommended as a suitable alternative when I reported the incident to her.

  I had been worrying about what George’s parents might say when he told them about our having become close friends and the high opinion of me that he appeared to have; I hoped they would not have found it necessary to say that the friendship was inappropriate. There was some comfort in the thought that they might find it awkward to explain their objections, whether or not they knew that I was a child of sin: What difference should my illegitimate birth make when Lucy Butler in Tyringham, who was invited everywhere, was widely known to have been adopted by old Dr. Butler and his wife? Of course, their feelings might be very strong if I was a skeleton in the family closet. But would they risk taking that skeleton out just to put an end to my palling around with George? There was nothing I knew of that they could say against me personally, other than that some of my contemporaries considered me stuck-up, by which I hoped they meant that I was too literary. They couldn’t say I was a sissy; nobody could call me that. So it would have to be that I was disqualified simply as the son of my parents. But even if Mr. and Mrs. Standish thought that my parents’ reputation was as bad as I feared, I somehow doubted that they would want to say so to George, or that being told, he wouldn’t say that what my parents did was none of his business. In fact, I was coming to think that my vision of my standing in the Berkshires was tinged with hysteria only aggravated by Mr. Hibble’s declaration. I had to sort out these thoughts, especially since, if the less pessimistic view was borne out, the gates of the Standish estate—their property deserved that appellation—would no longer be closed to me literally or figuratively and I might be permitted to swim in Mr. Standish’s august pool, a privilege, I had been told all too often, granted only to the most favored children and teenagers. In the summer I might even be invited to the Standishes’ Sunday lunches. Those gates would not open for my parents, but it didn’t seem to me that duty or pride compelled me to refuse such invitations if they came, any more than they dictated rejecting George’s friendship.

  My parents were at home, still dressing to go out. I changed rapidly and waited for them in the living room. My father brought down a tray with their glasses and the shaker and got busy making another batch of martinis. He asked whether I wanted one. I told them I was to have a drink at George’s house and added something about wanting to have my head clear on the road. That focused my mother’s mind. She said, Whatever you do, don’t crack up my car. And then, to my father, Maybe I’ll drive. Maybe you won’t, he replied. I won’t have any of that stuff.

  I looked at them. Their faces were puffy, but overall they were a handsome couple. Being very thin and dressed just right helped, as did table lamps with pink bulbs. My mother wore a silver strapless sheath. She had no breasts to speak of, and her posture in profile was peculiar, something like a sexy question mark. Her legs were exceptional, long and shapely. She had no use for girlfriends and liked men, perhaps even my father, and indeed men swarmed around her. Perfectly respectable men, as well as those about whom people talked. I asked myself whether knowing that she was not my real mother had enabled me to see her more nearly the way other men did, but I couldn’t say that there had been a real change.

  Are you going to bring your roommate over tomorrow? she asked. Not too early, please. My father interjected, You had better make it late brunch at the club. I said I would have to invite Margot and George as well. The news that George would be his guest caused my father to perk up. He reminded me to give his and Mother’s New Year’s wishes to the Standish parents, whom for this occasion he called Jack and May, and renewed his offer of a martini. I kissed my mother, shook my father’s hand, and prepared to go out into the cold. The thermometer at the door had sunk to nine degrees. My father followed me to the threshold and peeked at the thermometer himself. Take the old raccoon, he said, go on, it won’t bi
te you. I thanked him and put it on.

  I hesitated about how far from the Standishes’ front door I should park in the circular driveway, and whether my car belonged in the driveway at all. Three were already there: the station wagon George had driven and two other station wagons. I supposed that was the only kind of automobile the family used. A couple of other cars were in the parking space in front of the huge garage that must have once been a stable. It seemed prudent to put my raccoon in the backseat and leave the car right there. The snow had been meticulously cleared and swept. It squeaked cheerfully under my feet. At the door a manservant met me with a tray of drinks. I took a glass of champagne. Champagne was not the standard beverage in the Berkshires, any more than was a man in white gloves or any male servant except the club bartender helping out on his night off. For that matter, waitresses in black satin dresses and lace aprons and headpieces that made them look like chambermaids in a French movie weren’t either. I thought of Henry’s feeling when he took possession of the dormitory bedroom with a view that he had entered a new world. What could be his impression now? Probably he was concluding, quite correctly, happy and a little frightened, that this was another, wider vista of that same world. Such were my own feelings too, although I was in a territory where, in theory, my feet should be squarely planted, visiting my nearest cousins. These grand relatives were but a few steps away, Mrs. Standish smiling wanly and Mr. Standish, splendid in his white tie and tails, positively beaming. Welcome, welcome, dear boy, he boomed, without waiting for Mrs. Standish to whisper my name to him, I see you have a glass of bubbly, have some more—without pausing for breath he beckoned to the manservant—and meet your girl cousins and their lords and masters. You were still in short pants when they flew the coop! I approached as bidden, pecked Mrs. Standish’s cheek when it was offered, took another glass—apparently glasses were exchanged, not refilled—and relayed my parents’ greetings. Yes, yes, yes, boomed Mr. Standish again, now come along.