The Center of the World

by Thomas van Essen

  “What’s the matter? Aren’t you happy to see me?”

  “Don’t be silly,” I said. “It was a long drive. Tons of traffic around Albany and a huge backup before the tolls. And I have to piss. I drank a lot of coffee to keep myself awake.” When I got back from the bathroom, I found she had set out a plate of cold cuts, some cheese, and a glass of beer. “I found some of that Spanish ham you like.”

  “That’s sweet of you,” I said. “But I thought I wasn’t supposed to eat this stuff. I was very good about eating while I was up there.” The fact was that I had hardly eaten since I found the painting. Food had seemed irrelevant and alcohol unnecessary.

  I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, so I picked at what she had laid out. I told her about some of the other things I had found in the barn.

  “Let’s go to bed. I have to catch the seven-twenty tomorrow, to be at a nine o’clock meeting,” she said. “You must be exhausted from all that driving. Come upstairs.”

  I puttered around in the kitchen until I thought she would be asleep. When I went upstairs, I let my clothes fall to the floor and slipped into bed. As she turned over toward me, I hoped it was nothing more than one of those automatic habits of the long-married, but she said, “I thought you’d never get here.”

  She propped herself up on her elbow and kissed me. Her hand worked its way into my shorts. There should have been nothing more familiar and comfortable, but I felt a shudder of distaste.

  “Come on,” she said. “You’ve been gone for a week.”

  I told her I was tired and that I just wanted to go to sleep. “Good night,” I said. “Thanks for making me such a nice snack.”

  “This is something new. Welcome home.” She turned over with emphasis and settled down on her side of the bed as far away from me as possible.

  I lay on my back like a dead person and listened to her breathing. Eventually she fell asleep. Helen’s eyes seemed to meet mine in the darkness. Aphrodite herself was woven into the transparent cloth which caressed her perfect shoulders. In the far distance the beautiful ships crossed the sparkling ocean. An eagle, who was Zeus, looked down on the world of men.

  . 15 .

  GINA CALLED BRYCE from London to tell him that she had found something of interest, something extraordinary, but he silenced her before she could say anything further. “Whatever it is,” he said, “I’d rather hear about it from you in person. Our people will have you on the next flight out. There will be a driver at JFK. It will be a joy to see you, since a happy errand will no doubt do wonders for your complexion. Not a word more.”

  Bryce put down the receiver and sat perfectly still. He allowed himself a moment to wonder what she had found. It had been months since she discovered the Collins letter. The last few times he’d seen her, he had detected signs of stress and overwork that threatened to mar her beauty. She had lost a few pounds, which was, in his opinion, to the good, but there had been something haggard about her eyes which, in combination with her brisk and professional demeanor, gave her the unappealing air of a newly fledged McKinsey consultant. But she was doing very well. Mr. Ashford had been delighted with her visit and had purchased both the Soutine and the Cassatt, a transaction that was both aesthetically and financially rewarding.

  Gina, on the other end of the line, was glad to be returning to New York, and not only because she looked forward to seeing Bryce’s reaction as he grasped the importance of what she had found. Lately there had been too many incoherent late-night calls from her mother, which made Gina anxious to find out what was going on. Julia had been living with her mother for about five years, ever since her mother had hired her to redo the apartment in honor of her second divorce. Gina liked Julia well enough, but there was something going on between the two of them, something that seemed to involve more alcohol than usual. It occurred to Gina that she was trying to grow up as hard as she could while both of her parents were succeeding in doing the opposite.

  Thanks to the first-class ticket, she had been able to nap on the plane, so she felt quite rested when she arrived at Madison Partners at lunchtime. Bryce betrayed his eagerness to see her by calling her up to the library before she’d even had a chance to put her suitcase down and say hello to her colleagues.

  He was dressed, Gina thought, with unusual care, his red-and-blue silk tie so extraordinarily rich and fine that she found herself staring. A salad and a plate of cheese and cured meat was waiting on the sideboard of the library. Bryce asked if she wanted a snack.

  “I do,” she said, “but I can eat while you read. You will have noticed that I’ve been spending your money on various shady characters and unemployed graduate students who have been scouring the Sussex countryside on your behalf. One of them hit pay dirt in a used bookstore in the village of Kirdford, which is just outside of Petworth.

  “Do you remember our friend George Wyndham, the bastard heir of Lord Egremont, Turner’s great patron? You once described him as one of ‘those angry vulgarians upon whom aristocracy is wasted.’ The phrase stuck with me and I determined to find out what I could about him.”

  Wyndham, she explained, was born in 1787 and spent his entire career being furious at his illegitimacy. He served briefly in the Guards but primarily passed his time as an inconsequential hanger-on at Petworth. He lived there with his wife and children, but he was never part of the company of artists and intellectuals who were his father’s guests.

  When his father died in 1837, he inherited one of the greatest estates in England, but he was so bitter about being unable to inherit his father’s title that he devoted most of his energy to an unrelenting assertion of the privileges he felt were his due. While the father had been loose and easy in his relations with others, the son was comically strict and formal. He banished the artists and painters from Petworth. He kept the property up in a conservative way, he hunted, and he engaged in a series of petty quarrels over the demarcation of his hunting grounds.

  “His wife, Mary,” Gina went on, “was a pious woman, with a strong Evangelical streak. She set the tone that prevailed at Petworth in the years following Egremont’s death. She and her husband both worried that the ‘sins of the father’ would be visited upon the son.

  “It’s with this background that you need to read the document that I’m about to give you. Sometime in the early 1840s, when Wyndham was in his mid-fifties, he had a kind of conversion experience and was tempted to write one of those spiritual biographies that were popular in Evangelical circles at the time. He never completed it, but the manuscript turned up in that used bookshop, in an old register book detailing the proceedings of the Sussex hounds.” Gina opened her portfolio and gave Bryce a stack of yellowing manuscript papers, covered in an awkward hand. She turned her attention to the salad and the cheese; Bryce ordered more coffee and began to read.

  I was born into the curse of illegitimacy on the fifth of June 1787, my father being George O’Brien Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont of Petworth House, Sussex, and my mother being Elizabeth Iliffe of Westminster. My mother and father were married in 1801, too late to cleanse me of that stain which attended my birth.

  My father was avowed to be during his lifetime one of the greatest men in all of England, celebrated for his enlightened view of Agriculture to which he made many improvements, including advances in the breeding of swine. He was also known as a man of taste and fashion due to his wonderful collection of paintings and statues. He was much given to Immorality of the flesh. I was the oldest of the nine children that he had with my mother, and to this I owe my position and property, for which I am grateful. But the Countryside was filled with Rumours as to his carryings on with the daughters of his tenants as well as ladies and girls of fashion both here and in London, and only God knows what the true number of my brothers and sisters is.

  My mother was a jolly woman and most kind but hard worn out by my father’s Irregularities. In her youth she was no better than she needed to be, coming to Petworth without the benefit of matrimony when she wa
s but fifteen years old and eighteen years younger than my father. She tried for many years to become a decent woman and do what she could to make amends for the sins of her past and to confer some decency on her children. Well do I recall the fierce quarrels they had on this subject when I was young. At last my father gave in to the pleas of decency and common sense and married her when I was already fourteen years of age.

  But Matrimony and advancing age did not confer Morality upon my father and he continued with his irregular ways, often bringing his whores to Petworth and carrying on most shamefully. My mother bore all with good humour and the patience of a Saint, but at times his outrages provoked her to leave. He thought no more of it than a sixpence and carried on as before, knowing she would always return to him, as she was dependent on him for Income.

  My mother died in 1822, done to death by my father’s Sinfulness. At that time I was returned to Petworth, married to my beloved Mary and attempting to live a life of sense and decency amidst all the licence of artists and so forth who surrounded my father and mother. My father had been truly fond of my mother and was sorrowful for her. I had hopes that her Death would be a Lesson to him and he would live out his days as a decent old Widower, for he was an old man now of seventy-one.

  After she died my father went to London for a month or two. When he came back he had with him Mrs. Spencer, who took my mother’s place before the sod had fairly sprouted on her grave. He had her carve, and installed her at the head of the table where by all rights my wife should have been. Mrs. Spencer was known in London for a beauty and had fine gold hair and good teeth. When we first met she held out her hand to me but I refused it, knowing that she was taking shameful advantage of an old man’s lechery. During the course of my father’s lifetime I had known many of his amours and liaisons and always made an effort to be civil to them if it was needed for form’s sake. But Mrs. Spencer I could not abide because she was younger than I was and because she showed no deference to those of a higher station. Once when my father was travelling to some distant estates Mrs. Spencer and I quarrelled most fiercely. My temper got the better of me and I said that she was no more than one of my father’s whores. She stayed as cool as could be and said we were too alike to quarrel as I was merely one of my father’s bastards.

  From that time on we never spoke unless we were required to for decency’s sake in front of my father or company. Not wishing to expose my own children and Mary to the licence and uproar of the house, I retired as much as possible during that time to our quarters and only mingled with them when required to for the sake of form.

  At around this time Turner was much in attendance and had become a great favourite of my father and Mrs. Spencer. Turner was an ill-formed little man with a great nose, black teeth, and a dirty coat, but Mrs. Spencer favoured him above all the other artists and pushed him forward towards my father. She spent more time with him alone than a decent woman would but she was not a decent woman. Her Vanity was such that she convinced Turner and my father that Turner should paint her portrait. He did and the result was a poor likeness called “Jessica,” after the character in Shakespeare, that was much mocked and scorned, with one clever fellow saying it looked like the woman had just climbed out of a mustard pot.

  I knew privately from my father that he was displeased with the painting and that he had half a mind not to pay for it, but in the end he did, no doubt because of Mrs. Spencer’s pleading and her taking advantage of his weaknesses.

  My father’s lechery continued unabated with Mrs. Spencer and with others when she was away in town which was a great miracle in a man of seventy-four. The house was full with a most disagreeable Miscellany of artists and other worthless fellows who ate and drank each one like two Guardsmen who had no care for the estate. The conversation at dinner was most indiscriminate with no recognition that there were those present such as Mary who had no desire to have their ears sullied by Scandal and Impiety. Over all this Riot Mrs. Spencer presided using her wiles and her smile to encourage the conversation whenever it threatened to flag and approach Decency.

  One day I noticed that carriages had been called for and a number of the party departed. The next day the same thing occurred and no new arrivals came to take their place. I had the strange Fancy that reason had prevailed and that my father had seen the error of his ways. But I was much abashed and annoyed when the next day my father called me into his study. At first the conversation was indifferent and concerned with matters of the estate. Then my father suggested that it might be pleasant for me to go to London at this time and that he had need of me to look after some matters there. I protested that I did not enjoy London at this time of year, that the matters he wanted attending to could surely wait until a better season, that the Cost of living in London was high and for reasons of Economy it seemed more reasonable for me to stay at Petworth with my family. As soon as I had uttered these words I could see that I had displeased him. All we Wyndhams have a temper; his was the hardest to provoke but when provoked it was the most fierce. He had a look of anger I had feared since I was a small boy. This look he directed at me and slammed his Fist upon the desk so hard that I feared for the Greek vase he prized so much. He insulted my Intelligence, saying that he had offered me a decent pretence, but that I was too much a Sheep to see it for what it was and as for Economy I would go to China at his expense if that was his desire. Wrath was also one of his sins in addition to Lechery.

  I was, in short, to vacate Petworth on the morrow and remain in London attending to that business he wished me to take care of until such time as I should be recalled. I knew there was no gainsaying him when he was in such a mood so I said that I should be willing to oblige him and took my leave. As I made my way to my apartments to give the orders for our departure, I could see more carriages waiting to take guests away. Mrs. Spencer was there bidding adieu to the guests, as was Turner and a young fellow whose name I have forgotten. I thought it odd that these three should be saying good-bye to all the others, but I didn’t devote much attention to it as I had other matters on my mind.

  That night when we came down to dinner, I saw that the Party was much reduced, viz. only Turner and the young fellow plus Mrs. Spencer and my father. Dinner passed tolerably, although my father was in a vile temper and chastised me for not replying to one of Mrs. Spencer’s jests. Most of the conversation was between Mrs. Spencer and the young fellow; Turner kept his face close to his plate and drank a good deal of wine as was his wont.

  The next morning there was much ado as we prepared to depart. The carriage was full with Mary and the children and the nursemaids, as was the cart and another carriage to take servants that would accompany us. Others had gone on before to prepare things. I knew that Mary would be displeased by the disorder we would find when we got there, but there was nothing to be done for it since we had been ordered out so suddenly. My father came out from his study to bid us adieu and a few steps behind him was Mrs. Spencer. She put her arm through his and stood beside him as he gave me some final instructions on the matter he wished me to attend to in London.

  Mrs. Spencer was as gracious as could be, saving especially kind words for Mary and the children and wishing us all a safe and pleasant journey in her very best manner. But I knew that she was doing it to spite and aggrieve me for she knew that I could say nothing in front of my father. As the carriage pulled away she stayed on the walk a moment after my father had already turned to go inside and I could see that there was a wicked smile of Triumph on her face.

  What her scheme was and why we had been bundled off to London I could not guess, although I was sure that there was some debauchery in it. What, I wondered, would those four be doing in such a great house all by themselves and with most of the servants gone too?

  I did not find out the answer until a few years after we returned and it proved that my father’s great sins of Lechery had gone on unabated until he had reached a very old age indeed. He was doing quite poorly—this was about ’32 or ’33, five or
six years before he was finally carried off—and I had gone up to his chambers to inquire after him. I was much concerned at this time that Mrs. Spencer would take advantage of my father in what might be his final illness. I also feared she might take as her own certain properties that rightly belonged to the estate.

  In those years that he was with Mrs. Spencer my father was most particular that no one ever enter his chambers without his specific permission. The door was ajar and I tapped on it to signal my arrival. There being no answer and being concerned that perhaps he had been carried off or was in his last throes, I entered. He was lying in the great bed with the covers all disordered. I could see at once that he was in a fever, for the dew stood on his forehead and he was quite red. He mumbled something I could not make out, so I approached the bed. As I did so I saw that the new cabinet he had ordered was open. There was a picture of a woman there, but so Obscene as to make me gasp and stand stock still at the Depravity of it. It was just at that moment Mrs. Spencer entered from the other door, carrying a basin of water and a towel. She gave a gasp and closed the cabinet doors as she came toward the bed, but not before I could see that it was a painting of her and could guess that Turner had painted it, because there were Greek columns in it and sunlight. I understood now that it was only to make this Abomination that all the company had been expelled from Petworth.

  Whereas another woman might have cowered in shame if someone had seen such a picture of her, she drew herself up to her full height. Rage glowed from her eyes. She ordered me out of the room and said it was like me to be sneaking about just at the moment of Crisis. She said I was to call for the Doctor and do it quickly. She gave me a look that quelled my complaints and I am ashamed to say that I did as she bade me. She never gave me another thought but bent over my father and tended to him with the water and the towel.