Women and Thomas Harrow

by John P. Marquand

  “Anyway,” Mrs. Hertime said, “the caretakers are starting to tidy up the shrubbery and the swimming pools and take the shutters off some of the houses.”

  He was surprised that Mrs. Hertime, who was Midwest, and as she liked to say, just folks, in spite of the chauffeur and the yacht and all the other things that Art had wanted, had not referred to the houses as homes—but she must have known that this could not be appropriate. You could never, somehow, think of the representative Palm Beach dwellings as homes. They were closer to being castles in Spain, or monuments to cumulative achievement, or to immature dream desires, but you could never call such specialized buildings homes. The architects who were so feverishly building in ’28 must have examined photographs of the Alhambra every night before they went to sleep, after caviar entrées and indigestible dinners—and then they must have dreamed. These dwellings had the frothy quality of designs squeezed out from different tubes by chefs to adorn the surface of an important piece of pastry, but this impression was neither disturbing nor inappropriate as he faced that new wonderland on that distant Sunday morning. In the eyes of their owners, they were meant to be escapist confections, that should not, even if they did, sit heavily on mind or conscience.

  “Oh, look, Art,” Mrs. Hertime said, “those nice young Bramhalls are here. Their house is all opened, and a colored girl is shaking a mop out of the upstairs window. Tom and Rhoda would just love them, and I’m sure that they’ll be cocktailing at the Everglades if it’s open.”

  The indiscriminate changing of nouns into verbs was a novelty to him then that fitted all those sights.

  “Yes, honey,” Mr. Hertime said, “it looks as though they were. I thought they were going to their place at Antibes this year.”

  “Perhaps Marion is sandwiching-in Palm Beach,” Mrs. Hertime said, “or maybe Dick is too busy.”

  “That’s so,” Mr. Hertime said. “Bankers are busier than bird dogs. Did you ever meet Dick Bramhall, Tom?”

  “No,” Tom said, “I don’t believe I have, Art.”

  “You’re such a congenial cuss,” Mr. Hertime said, “I keep forgetting you’re in show business. Dick Bramhall is Bramhall Box.”

  “Bramhall Box?” Tom asked.

  “That is, his father’s Bramhall Box,” Mr. Hertime said. “Dick is in the Guaranty, and if you want my opinion, he has one of the shrewdest investment brains in America. He handles my portfolio when I’m busy with new ideas. You two young fellows have got to get together.”

  “You wouldn’t know he had an investment brain or anything when he’s down here vacationing,” Mrs. Hertime said. “Dick and Marion are the nicest young people. And what do you think the name of their yacht is, Rhoda? It’s named Bramma. That shows you what fun they are—Bram for Bramhall and Ma for Marion. She says she’s a good little old-fashioned wife, and old-fashioned wives come second.”

  “Tom,” Rhoda said, “am I old-fashioned?”

  The thought came to him that she was as full-panoplied as though she had been Minerva stepping from the cloven head of Zeus, but it was not a formidable thought. He had never been as physically in love with her as at that moment, and ever afterwards he could understand why people were forever getting mixed up with other people in Florida.

  “You’re not old-fashioned, but you like things right,” he said.

  “Not right,” she answered, “only level. I like things so I know where they’ll be tomorrow.”

  “Then you ought to get out of this market, honey,” Mr. Hertime said. “No one knows where it’s going to be tomorrow.”

  The Hertime house was still standing when he had last been down there visiting the Bramhalls with Emily, and he had walked alone to look at it and had even ventured a few steps up the pebbled driveway. They were the same round pebbles that the Hertimes had used, and as they slipped and rattled beneath his feet, he could remember how the maroon Packard had sounded. The harsh winds that scoured the Florida East Coast had weathered the massive pseudo-Moorish hacienda with its Byzantine influence. The house had been intended for the heavy gaiety of another era, a happy moment in history, little concerned about the future. The lives of Art Hertime and others like him at old Palm Beach had represented a truly noble effort. Those people had wanted avidly to be happy, more perhaps than any other group that he had ever known.

  Happiness, or its approximation, enveloped him mistily the moment the Packard drew up beneath the porte-cochere. Lytton, the butler, was smiling and so was the footman, who wore a striped waistcoat; and so was Jim, the head gardener, smiling, and Suzanne, Mrs. Hertime’s personal maid.

  “We’ll share Suzanne between us, dear,” Mrs. Hertime said to Rhoda, “and they’ll have the ocean-view suite, Lytton.”

  “Is everything all right, Lytton?” Mr. Hertime asked.

  “Oh yes, sir,” Lytton said.

  “Let’s see,” Mr. Hertime said. “It’s a quarter of twelve. Drinks in the patio at 12:15. Luncheon at one, and, if it’s possible, we might have some pompano with nuts over it. Has any more Bollinger come in?”

  “Yes, sir,” Lytton said. “Mr. Farraday brought over five cases yesterday. He was sorry the labels were discolored by the salt water, but everything is legible.”

  “Good old Max,” Mr. Hertime said. “Somebody down the street must be going short if we’ve got five cases. All right, Bollinger and pompano, and the yacht at two. I want Mr. and Mrs. Harrow to see what there is to see. Is the Everglades Club open yet?”

  “I believe not yet, sir,” Lytton said.

  “Well, Angela honey,” Mr. Hertime said, “then I guess the Bramhalls won’t be cocktailing there. Say, Tom, is ‘cocktailing’ grammatical?”

  “I’m not exactly sure, Art,” he said, “but it’s a very attractive word, particularly when Mrs. Hertime uses it.”

  “Now listen, son,” Mr. Hertime said, “break the ice and call her Angela. Let’s get the Bramhalls to do a little cocktailing here at six and then dinner. How about it, Angela? And how about some good red roast beef? Dick and Tom will get along like two separate burning houses. And now Tom and Rhoda might like to get upstairs and take off their corsets and scratch until it’s drink time in the patio.”

  Their rooms were more beautiful than the downstairs rooms of the house, done in pecky cypress. The beds, the bureaus, and the tables had also been made of cypress. The curtains were of gray-blue light silk that went beautifully with the walls. Rhoda had never felt the uneasiness that was often with him at Palm Beach. She hurried from their sitting room to the bedroom to the boudoir-dressing-room to the bathroom, while he stood by admiring the bluish-green water of the sea across Ocean Boulevard, still trying to analyze his discomfort. Then Rhoda threw herself into his arms in a most unexpected way.

  “Oh, darling,” she said, “I can’t bear it. It’s all so wonderful.”

  “If you mean it’s different from the Bulwer, you’ve got something,” he said.

  “That’s why it’s wonderful,” she said. “It’s so different from anything I’ve ever known. It’s like magic.”

  “It’s different all right,” he said, “but I hope there isn’t magic.”

  “Why, Tom,” she said, “what’s the matter? You’ve been so happy ever since we had champagne for breakfast, and now you look so solemn.”

  “Maybe if we rang the bell we could get a half a bottle of Pommery,” he said. “Lytton could bring it up. Do you think he’s Bulwer-Lytton’s grandson?”

  “Tom,” she said, “you don’t sound like yourself at all.”

  “Maybe I’m not. Maybe, now I come to think of it, I’m afraid.”

  “Afraid?” she said. “What are you afraid of, unless it’s of being happy?”

  “I’m afraid I might begin to like this sort of thing too much,” he said. “Lytton and the limousine.”

  He put his arm around her waist and held her close, and he was happy for a second.

  “You certainly cuddled into that car,” he said, “like a cat on a cushion.”
/>   She pushed herself away from him.

  “Don’t muss my hair,” she said, “and besides, we ought to get ready for drinks on the patio. Why shouldn’t we like all this too much?”

  He could not make a specific answer, and he still could not delve into the vagaries of artistic conscience.

  “We don’t belong here,” he said.

  “Maybe not,” she said, “but at least I want to.”

  “I mean,” he said, “I can’t be like these people, Rhoda.”

  “Of course you can,” she said, “and so can I.” And she kissed him.

  The kiss took away the ominous note.

  “To hell with the patio,” he said. “Let’s be late.”

  “But, Tom,” she said, “Suzanne or Bulwer-Lytton might come in.”

  “I doubt it,” he said, “with those hand-wrought Spanish locks.”

  “I wish you’d keep things in some sort of sequence,” she said.

  Well, that was the way it had been once. You did not need sequence when the drums had beat that tune. You could move from one mood to another then and forget the shadows, and yet at the same time the cleavage between them had already started with his moments of uneasiness.

  “You see,” Mr. Hertime had said, “we have to play sometime.”

  Perhaps that was not such a bad way of describing just what went on down there on parts of the Florida East Coast, but nobody as far as he knew had ever fully explained what “play” meant as the term was used.

  “Now, before starting afternoon activities,” Mr. Hertime said after lunch, “I suggest that Tom and I slip into my Worry Room.”

  Why did he have a worry room when he came down there to get away from worry? It was possible to ask him, but hard to evaluate the answer.

  “It’s my little joke,” Mr. Hertime said, “isn’t it, Angela honey. Because I’ve given up worrying long ago. Let’s go in there and call up New York and ask about the market and the show.”

  If the Worry Room was a witticism, its appearance was not jocular. It contained a flat desk, two telephones, scratch pads, and sharp pencils.

  “Yes,” Mr. Hertime said, “sometimes you’ve got to charge your batteries. In summer it’s Watch Hill. You’ve got to see Watch Hill.… Long Distance, please.”

  Mr. Hertime held a telephone contemptuously, in a firm, ritualistic manner.

  “Hello,” Mr. Hertime said. “Is that you, Charlie? I’m here with Tom Harrow who wrote that show. How’s our little market project going?”

  There was the rattle of a voice on the receiver, but Mr. Hertime was not worried.

  “All right,” he said. “Let it ride. And now about the show at the Empire … Well, well, well.”

  Mr. Hertime smiled.

  “Well, well, well. It’s sold out solid and Metro and Warner are bidding for the picture. You get the point now, don’t you, Tom, why I call this the Worry Room?”

  He believed that his powers of comedy automatically increased when he came to places like Palm Beach and Antibes, but anyone could panic the Hertimes and the Bramhalls, and the same was true with the Ordway Gibsons and the Ogelthorps and the Stewart Enderbees—not the ones who were mixed up with Coca-Cola and not the Enderbee Ointment Enderbees, but the other ones—and the Maurice Jakeworths, who owned the Rainbow Farm Stables. No matter what you said, they always laughed at Palm Beach, and that was doubtless why the Bramhalls had always said that the moment they had laid eyes on Tom and Rhoda, in the Hertimes’ patio that evening, there had been an instinctive, congenial bond between them.

  He had been more impressed by their clothes than their faces, and Marion Bramhall did have a beautiful figure, though not as good as Rhoda’s, and her Burgundy Shantung dinner dress, he was afraid, was better than Rhoda’s. When it came to Dick Bramhall, Dick already had his look of executive integrity and Dick was one of the first people he had ever known with a crew cut. He had never thought they would always be dear friends, but Marion Bramhall had reminded him again and again of what he had first said to her.

  “You must go out on Dick’s and my boat sometime,” she had said.

  “I’d love to,” he had said, “if you don’t pull up the anchor.”

  Marion had never forgotten that bon mot or the sly twinkle that had come into his eye just before he made it.

  “Oh dear,” she said, “we won’t pull up the anchor. It’s called the Bramma, you know.”

  “I don’t see why you didn’t call it the Maddick,” he said, “not that we’re on a first-name basis, Mrs. Bramhall.”

  “Dick,” she called, “did you hear what he said? Why didn’t we call the Bramma the Maddick, and we’re not on a first-name basis, but we’re going to be. We’re all going to love each other, aren’t we, Dick?”

  But the important thing that evening had occurred after dinner when they were out on the patio again admiring the colored electric lights in the patio palms that made them look, as Mrs. Hertime said, like tropical Christmas trees.

  “Oh no,” Marion Bramhall had said, “they look like those trees with jewels out of the Arabian Nights.”

  In the red, green, and white glare from those whispering palms, he found himself talking after dinner with Marion Bramhall, while across the patio Rhoda and Dick Bramhall were engaged in a low-voiced, earnest conversation.

  “How does it feel, Tom, to have a real live Broadway hit on your hands?” Marion Bramhall had asked.

  “I’m glad you asked me that,” he had said. “Just between you and me, it feels fine.”

  “It must be wonderful to write so divinely,” Marion Bramhall then said. “My father used to try to write. He used to lock himself into his den every morning after Grandpa died. He was interested in eighteenth-century English writing, I think.”

  “Tom,” Rhoda said, and her voice had that wind-bell ring that it always had when she had encountered something delightful, “Dick has a wonderful suggestion for you now the play is going so well. Tom, I want Dick to tell you himself.”

  “I know,” Tom said, “take out life insurance. Someone told me that before we came here, Rhoda.”

  “Tom,” she said, “be serious. It isn’t entirely about life insurance.”

  Dick Bramhall cleared his throat, not in a harsh way.

  “I don’t mean to be rushing in where angels fear to tread,” Dick said.

  “Don’t worry,” Tom answered. “Angels never care how much they step on me.”

  “Oh, Dick,” Marion Bramhall said, “just listen to him. He says things like that all the time.”

  “Well, it just occurred to me,” Dick said, “that we might talk sometime about setting up a custodian account and having your royalties and other earnings paid into it, and then we could sit down and work out a portfolio of insurance and securities. I’d gladly give you some advice sometime.”

  “Well, that would be fine,” he answered. “Someone was talking the other day about a good stock called Electric Bond and Śhare.”

  “There,” Rhoda said, “that’s exactly what I mean, Dick.”

  Dick Bramhall coughed again.

  “I don’t mean to rush in where angels fear to tread,” he said again, “but maybe Rhoda has a point. I wouldn’t buy anything but Liberties just now. The time to buy stocks is when the market gets too low. Now if we had a custodian account …”

  He added that such an account would be new business for the bank, and he was there to get new business, but anyone could tell that Dick Bramhall had made that tentative offer on the first evening of their acquaintance because he was basically kind, and Dick Bramhall was one of the few basically kind investment men he had ever known.

  “I did it,” Dick Bramhall told him later, “because you and Rhoda were babes in the wood under those lights in the palm trees. I did it because I knew what would happen to you if I didn’t. I’ve got so at the bank I’m able to read faces a little.”

  “Do you mean I have a weak face?” Tom asked.

  Dick Bramhall shook his head.

/>   “No,” he said, “not weak. Financially incapable. Now Rhoda, on the other hand, has a financial face.”

  The beauty of Rhoda, her clarity, and her gaiety had concealed from him what Dick Bramhall had seen.

  XXII

  Happiness Was Just around the Corner

  He should have learned, as Rhoda had. He should have listened, while he had the chance, to the sayings and the maxims of great men like the Hertimes and the Bramhalls. If he had paid heed, the grinding in the street would not have been so low tonight; but, truthfully, he could not have listened then any more than he could now, because he was not made to hear their Ben Franklin type of wisdom. He had not been born with the patience and perception to discover the grains of wisdom that existed in the sayings of Henry Ford, Sr., and Andrew W. Mellon. He had other fish to fry, and his own activities in the winter of ’29 were time-consuming. Success sparkled like the breakfast champagne at the Hotel Bulwer before it went flat and he was bored with it, but he had to face the aftermath: new friends, new problems, new vistas, and the never-to-be-wholly-grasped essences of his craft. The truth was he preferred the words of Sophocles, Molière, Shakespeare, Ibsen, Shaw and O’Neill to the pontifications of Rhoda’s big parade—and he still preferred living to security. He did not mean that there was not pleasure in the easy inflow and outflow of large sums; but he had always been bored with advice on how to keep them. It was true that he had always been financially impotent, and, frankly, he did not care.

  “But you can’t know,” Dick Bramhall said, “whether you can ever do anything like Hero’s Return again.”

  Right as rain. Of course you never knew. It was the fear that moved creation, but Bramhall did not understand the drives of uncertainty. He measured them in money, which was not the honest measure.

  “You don’t have to explain,” he could hear his voice from the past answering the Bramhall voice. “I know what you mean. Maybe I’m afraid you’re making me too damn safe. If I save too much money, why should I try to do it again?”