A Season in Purgatory

by Dominick Dunne

  “ ‘She was legendary for her taste and for a client list that over the years featured such names as Phipps, Vanderbilt, Guest, Rockefeller, Niarchos, Onassis, and Bradley,’ ” read Claire. “ ‘It was at the wedding of Maureen Bradley in 1973 that she took her terrible fall from the top of a ladder while pinning a French toile lining to the tent, breaking both her legs.’ ”

  Claire put down the paper.

  “Is that the end of the obituary?” asked Harrison.

  “No, there’s more,” said Claire. “I remember that, when old Cora Mandell fell off the ladder. It was the night before the wedding. I was a bridesmaid in that wedding.”

  “You were?” asked Harrison. There was astonishment in his voice. “You were a bridesmaid in Maureen Bradley’s wedding?”

  “Yes.”

  “You never told me that.”

  “It didn’t occur to me to tell you. It was not a major event of my life. Besides, I never mention the Bradleys.”

  “Why?”

  “A bad memory.”

  “What? Tell me.”

  “The old man, Gerald, wandered the halls on the night before the wedding and came into my room and got into bed with me. Put his hands all over me. It was revolting. Practically raped me. Thank God he came before he got it in me. I threatened to scream if he didn’t get out. He was terrified of Grace hearing me and left. I stayed through the wedding itself, not to cause a ruckus. There he was in the cathedral with his silver rosary beads and his eyes closed while the papal blessing was being read by their in-house cardinal. I wanted to puke at the hypocrisy.”

  Harrison nodded.

  “I snuck out before the reception. I left my bridesmaid’s dress in a wastebasket in the room where I slept. Seven hundred bucks it cost. Quite a lot for a bridesmaid’s dress. Especially back then. It was very pretty. I could have worn it again as an evening dress, but I didn’t want to. I’ve never seen Maureen again. Not even a Christmas card. But the old man sent me a mink coat. Hush money, I suppose.”

  “From Revillon Frères?”

  “How in the world did you know that, Harrison?”

  “Did you keep it?” he asked.

  “Of course I kept it, but I never wrote a thank-you note.”

  “How did you even know Maureen?”

  “I met her in Florida one winter. I was really a friend of the guy she married,” said Claire. “Freddy Tierney.”

  “Did you send her an announcement when you married me?” Harrison asked.

  “No. I wasn’t the first friend of the Bradley sisters that their father tried to poke. I always thought the girls knew and closed their eyes to it. Why?”

  “I knew them, too.”

  “You never told me that, Harrison,” said Claire. “But there’s so much about you you don’t talk about.”

  “That’s what you get for taking up with a younger man,” said Harrison.

  “Yes. A glum, somber younger man. Where did you know the Bradleys?”

  “I knew Constant at Milford. I sometimes went to Scarborough Hill for weekends.”

  “Do you keep in touch?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Schoolboy friendship. No more. Outgrew it, I suppose. I went to Europe after graduation and never saw him again.”

  “He’s so good-looking. I’ll say that for him. In the family they all said he was going to be president one day. Maybe he will. Who knows? I remember all the bridesmaids were mad about him. They all wanted to dance with him. He was a wonderful dancer. And he gave the funniest toast the night before at the bridal dinner at that club they belong to.”

  “The Country Club. Capital T on the The. They made a big deal out of that,” said Harrison.

  “Yes. But there was something odd about him. The local people avoided him, the Scarborough Hill people. At the club, there was a bartender, I can’t remember his name. Corky, something like that. He told me about a murder that had taken place there some months before. A girl who was new to the city. And Constant had been dancing with her on the night of the murder. Did you know about that?”

  “No. Listen, what time is it? I can’t be late.”

  “Yes, yes, run off, Harrison. You always seem to be running off when there is the slightest thing to discuss that might help us to get to know each other better. Imagine that we are only now discovering that we both know the Bradleys, and know them rather well. What does that say about us?”

  Harrison laughed. “Listen, you married an orphan. I don’t have a past story. Only Aunt Gert. And she’s in St. Mary’s Home, and gaga.”

  They had been married for over a year. She had come along with an editor from his publishing house to the launch party of his first book, an indictment of the Wall Street financier Elias Renthal, who was serving six years in Danbury for his part in an insider trading scandal.

  “I’m so glad you nailed Renthal,” said Claire, when she was introduced. “Awful what those awful men are doing.”

  She was tall, grave, intelligent looking, and, finally, pretty. “But I must say I felt sorry for poor Mrs. Renthal,” she added. “She seemed quite decent.”

  “I liked her, although she wouldn’t be interviewed,” replied Harrison. Someone else was waiting to speak to him, but Claire was in no hurry to move on.

  “I saw on your book jacket you went to Brown,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “I went to Brown, too.”

  “Really?”

  “Ahead of you by several years.”

  A photographer hired by the publisher asked them to turn and face him, and took their picture. “Be talking,” he instructed them. He thought they were together. The next night they dined together. And the next he stayed overnight with her. At Christmas he went to Philadelphia with her to visit her family. In February she told him she was pregnant. In April they were married by a judge in New York City. In July the twins were born.

  “You think of the names,” Claire said.

  “I like Timothy,” Harrison replied.

  “Yes, that’s quite nice. What about the other? Ralph?”

  “Oh, no, not Ralph. Robert? Rory? Charles? Why not Charles? One of my favorite characters in fiction was called Charles.”

  “Charles Ryder, I bet,” said Claire.

  “That’s right.” He smiled at her.

  “All right. Timothy and Charles. Timmy and Charlie. We’ll have to face the nicknames eventually. Still okay? I think they’re quite nice names. Tell me something, Harrison? Would you have married me if I hadn’t been pregnant?”

  “What a ridiculous question.”

  “What a nonanswer.”

  One night, when they were in bed, sleeping, the telephone rang. Claire, groping in the dark, picked it up.

  “Hello? Hello?”

  “I would like to speak to Harrison Burns please,” said the voice on the other end.

  Claire reached for the light switch and turned on the bedside lamp. It was two-fifteen in the morning.

  “Could you call Mr. Burns back in the morning please,” she said. “It’s very late, and my husband is asleep.”

  “No, I must speak to him now,” said the voice.

  “Who is this speaking?”

  “You won’t know me.”

  “Then I can’t wake up my husband.”

  “Your husband will know me.”

  “May I have your name?”

  “Diego Suarez. He might remember me as Fruity.”

  Claire Burns had never heard of Diego Suarez, or Fruity Suarez, but there were many people in her husband’s life whom she didn’t know. “Fruity Suarez?” she repeated, incredulously.

  Harrison, lying next to her, had been listening with his eyes closed, trying not to wake up, knowing that awakening would mean that he would not get back to sleep, but when he heard Claire repeat the name Fruity Suarez, his body jerked into full awareness.

  “I’ll take it,” he said. “No, put him on hold, and I’ll take it in the other room. I do
n’t want to disturb you.”

  “No, Harrison, take it here. I’m already awake. Who is he?”

  “Someone from school.”

  “Can’t he call you in the morning? It’s absurd for anyone to call at this hour.”

  He took the telephone from her without replying. “Hello?” Claire was struck by the hesitation in his voice.

  “Hello, Harry,” said Fruity.

  “My word, what a surprise. It’s been years,” said Harrison.

  “Seventeen. On March sixth, the anniversary of the day I was kicked out of Milford for conduct unbecoming, it will be eighteen.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “You’ve done well. I read you. I watch you.”

  “Surely this is not a fan’s call.”

  “No, no it’s not, Harry.” There was a long pause.

  “Are you calling from New York?”

  “No.”

  “Where then?”

  “Chicago. Did I ever tell you about a cousin of mine on my mother’s side called Maud Firth?”

  “I don’t believe so.”

  “A charming young woman. A little wild, maybe, but charming.”

  “Yes?”

  “This evening an unfortunate situation occurred in a hotel room in Chicago, and Maud’s head was split open, requiring seventeen stitches.”

  “I don’t see what this has to do with me, Fruity.”

  “It was Constant Bradley who caused Cousin Maud’s head to require seventeen stitches.”

  “Dear God.”

  “They met at a polo match in Lake Forest. There was drinking. They went to a hotel room. There was a misunderstanding. Maud tried to leave. Constant knocked her down, and she hit her head.”

  Harrison, breathing heavily, did not reply.

  “Are you there?” asked Fruity.

  “Yes.”

  “Maud was afraid to tell her parents, so she came to me, her disreputable cousin, the family disgrace, who would be shocked at nothing, who just happened to be visiting the city.”

  “I still don’t know what this has to do with me,” said Harrison.

  “I felt this was information that you should have. There was that murky business in Scarborough Hill all those years ago. What was her name? Winifred Utley?”

  Harrison, aghast, did not reply.

  “Are you surprised I know that? Country club gossip travels from club to club, you know, especially when it involves a handsome, rich polo player with political ambitions. I was merely wondering if there was a pattern of behavior being established here. You are, after all, on the side of law and order in everything you write. It is what people say about you.”

  “Is that all, Fruity?”

  “No. I always knew he had a mean streak beneath all that charm and billion-dollar smile. I was the one he pissed on at Milford. I do mean pissed on, literally. Do you remember?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have any idea how that made me feel?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, I kept up a brave front. I’ve kept up a brave front all my life. I laughed with the rest of you. But I saw the look on his face. I saw those sapphire blue eyes turn mean.”

  “I’m sorry about your cousin.”

  When he hung up the telephone, he turned and looked at Claire. She looked back at him, questioningly. He picked up her hand and held it. “Claire,” he said.

  “What is it, Harrison?”

  “I wonder if you would do me an enormous favor.”

  “What is it?”

  “Don’t ask me to explain to you what that telephone call was all about.”

  Harrison Burns started each day by writing in his journal. The morning after the encounter with Luanne Utley at Borsalino’s, he wrote:

  In retrospect, I am appalled at my duplicity with Luanne Utley last night. But was it really duplicitous? I have long since removed Winifred Utley from the forefront of my mind, removed her so completely it is as if what I saw sixteen years ago in a wooded grove in Scarborough Hill had happened to someone other than me. The memory of it rests within me in a dormant state. I have long ceased to dwell on what happened. I have not forgotten it, but I have packed it away, like something in a trunk in an attic. I do not want to deal with what the meeting with Mrs. Utley could awaken in me. Life goes on. Years get filled up. Other things happen.

  And yet, I know, I know, I know I have a scene to play in life with Luanne Utley. She looked at me so deeply, almost staring inside me, as she told me about the reward, the fifty thousand dollars. There was no anger, no hate in her look. If anything, there was compassion. Her pale, sad pretty face and the deep sorrow expressed in all her features moved me more than I can say. If Gerald had not provided for me, would I have remained silent all this time? Would I have told what I know? I don’t know, but I delight that I have returned every one of Sims Lord’s monthly checks since I started to earn my own living.

  He ended his entry. He put away his book. He began to go about the business of the day: Esme Bland.

  7

  It was when Harrison Burns was researching the life of Esme Bland, the madwoman incarcerated in a mental institution in Maine for shooting a young man who charged for his favors, that he met Rupert du Pithon. People in Esme Bland’s circle were reluctant to talk about her. She was, as Blanche Islington said, “one of us,” and the understanding was that people like them didn’t talk about one of their own, no matter what she had done. “Poor Esme,” they would say, “in and out of institutions for years,” and then clam up and say no more. Blanche would add only, trying to be helpful, because she liked Harrison Burns, “You must talk to Rupert du Pithon. He knew Esme. He could tell you a thing or two. He knows everything about everybody.” The subtle undertone was that Rupert du Pithon, for all his grandiosity, was not quite one of them, not born into it as they were, and would be more likely to talk about the unfortunate Esme, whom he knew, as he had known Esme’s late father, the distinguished Esmond Bland, who was known far and wide as the friend of presidents and other important people.

  The name Rupert du Pithon was not unknown to Harrison Burns. For years it had appeared in society columns with such frequency that it retained a place somewhere in the storage compartment of his brain, but he knew nothing specific about him.

  “What does he do?” Harrison asked, trying to familiarize himself with the name.

  “Do? He does nothing,” cried Blanche Islington. “Never has. That’s his whole charm. Or countercharm, depending on how he strikes you. Oh, he’s marvelous at placement, of course. He can seat a dinner party better than anyone I’ve ever known. He knows everything about precedence, that sort of thing. Adele Harcourt used to rely greatly on him when she entertained the mighty. Did the bishop or the governor go on her right—that sort of thing. He always knew. His greatest life accomplishment was a dancing party he gave for Lil Altemus. We are not talking about a serious person.”

  “But why would he talk to me when none of you will?”

  “It’s a good time to get to him. He’s somewhat out of fashion. He’s not asked out the way he used to be. He rubbed several of the right people the wrong way. And once you get him started, he can’t stop talking. He’s one of those—talk, talk, talk. I would suggest taking him out to a fashionable restaurant. He likes to be seen, especially now that he’s not much in circulation.”

  In parting, Blanche Islington added one more bit of information about Rupert du Pithon. “Oh, never share a confidence with him. It will come back to haunt you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Oh, and one other thing. He wears a little wig.” She held up her hands to her head, as if she were trying on a smart hat. “Sort of perched, like this. Pretend you don’t notice. He thinks no one does.”

  Rupert du Pithon, or Rupie, as his intimates called him, became famous for knowing famous people. “You must call Rupie if you are in New York,” people in his set once said. “He knows everyone.” But of late his position had changed. He was no
longer sought after by fashionable society. He had quarreled with important people. He had overestimated his social importance. His gossiping had become indiscreet, and his loud criticism of the wedding dress of Sally Steers’s daughter, spoken as she was coming down the aisle of St. James’s, had infuriated all of Sally’s friends. “Paillettes? Her mother must be mad,” he had said. It was, they all felt, the last straw.

  The tables of his overcrowded apartment were overflowing with silver-framed photographs of film stars, nobles, and the well-born who had achieved social fame or disgrace. “That’s Diana Cooper,” he would say. “She was heavenly.” Or, “That’s Lady Kenmare. You know her story, don’t you?” There were those who claimed the photographs were mostly of dead people who couldn’t deny that they hadn’t known him as well as he claimed they had. For years he was seated well in the best restaurants, although restaurant owners found him a difficult client; he often sent back his food, sometimes more than once, with loud complaints to the chef about the boeuf, or the soufflé, or the mousse. In waiters’ circles, he was renowned as a notoriously cheap tipper. The recent change in his social and financial circumstances had disobliged the same restaurateurs from seating him well, and rather than suffer the shame of public demotion, such as getting a table on the wrong side of the room, he no longer presented himself at their establishments. “I never go there anymore,” he would say. “Don’t you think it’s slipped?”

  The number of his appearances at the best parties had also diminished. His popularity, if it ever was that, was in abeyance, and he now read about parties to which he was no longer invited. That he agonized and despaired over his exclusion was a secret he shared with no one. “I’m so sick of going to parties,” he would now say, shaking his head. “The same people night after night. I simply declined. I said I wouldn’t go.”

  His name and quotes on matters of taste and manners no longer appeared in fashionable magazines, as they had for years. “Oh, I never entertain on Saturday night. Everyone’s in the country,” he had said in one of his interviews, but the same editors now no longer sought his opinions. “He is stale, finished, out of date, no longer invited,” said Dolly De Longpre, the doyenne of society columnists, and her dictum prevailed.