The Golden Calves Page 8

  For the possibilities of the museum were now limitless. So wide was the area of its coverage, so vast its collections, that with the Speddon money it could choose any role in the cultural world it desired. It had been the beneficiary of the migration of wealthy New Yorkers from mansions to brownstones, and from brownstones to apartments, and from these to the suburbs, each step necessitating the shedding of quantities of furniture, porcelain, silver, gold, clothes and even jewelry. Why, the museum had trunks in its warehouse that had never been opened! He would now unite the staff in the task of overhauling, recataloguing and redisplaying the collections. The institution, once faded and shabby, the darling of old maids and widows, now, like the somnolent court in The Sleeping Beauty, would awaken to glitter and dance. Even the impassive guards would be aware that a new spirit had invaded the land.

  But Anita’s presence persisted. There came an interview with her that made Mark feel the deflation of the Hans Christian Andersen milkmaid who, daydreaming on her way to market of the riches that the pail balanced on her pate would bring once its contents had been sold and magically reinvested, tossed her head with the vain gesture of the princess she would then be and spilled the milk.

  “I trust it is not too early to ask the director what steps the administration is contemplating to ensure the proper housing of Miss Speddon’s collection.”

  He found her tone distinctly abrasive. “What housing?”

  “Well, surely you don’t think Miss Speddon’s things can be accommodated in our present space?”

  “‘Our’ space? I see. This old dog of an institution is going to have to get used to being wagged by its new tail. And just how do you suggest that we inflate our present quarters?”

  “Don’t we—excuse me, ‘you’—own the vacant lot to the west? And the two brownstones beyond that? You have room to put up a large annex.”

  “An annex! With building costs what they are? You dream, Miss Vogel.”

  “I do not dream, Mr. Addams. Miss Speddon has left the museum millions. Far more than is needed to care for all of her things. Of course it was her intention that they should be properly housed, and of course she expected to pay for it.”

  Mark stared. This was a new Anita. He wondered whether even Chessie would not change her mind if she heard her now. “But that money is for endowment. We never promised Miss Speddon that we would build with it.”

  “Cannot promises be implied? From all the acts and dealings of the parties? I suggest you ask Miss Norton about that.”

  Mark could think of nothing to say to this, but the subject was still very much on his mind at his weekly conference with the chairman of the board. He asked Sidney if there had been any understanding with Miss Speddon about increasing the size of the museum.

  “Increasing it? What the hell for?”

  “To take care of all her artifacts. Miss Vogel seems to think that’s what you were to use the money for.”

  “Miss Vogel thinks I am going to use good endowment money to put a roof over all that junk? Miss Vogel is a greater fool than I took her for.”

  Sidney Claverack, Mark supposed, used the personal pronoun both in his capacity as museum chairman and as executor of the will. He evidently regarded himself in fact as well as in law as the living embodiment of the late Evelyn Speddon.

  “Junk!” Mark murmured, glancing at the door. Fortunately it was closed.

  “Well, not all of it, of course. I’ll have to do a lot of winnowing out. But when we’ve picked out the pearls, I think you’ll find they’ll all fit easily into our present space.”

  “And the rest?”

  “Well, what the hell do you think, Mark? The rest will be sold, of course.”

  What really appalled Mark was the sudden, illuminating realization that he was more appalled than surprised. The veil through which he had long contemplated the chairman could have been of no one’s devising but his own.

  “Miss Vogel, I suppose, will expect to have something to say about that.”

  “That spook of a girl? Surely, Mark, you don’t think a mere amanuensis of our late benefactress is going to stand in the way of institutional progress?”

  “You may be underestimating her, sir. She can be very strong when she’s defending the Speddon collection.”

  “And she can also be fired.” Sidney seemed to find it irksome that such a fly should have the temerity to alight even momentarily on him. He waved his hand as if to dispose of Anita. “I know all about Miss Vogel. It’s my job as a lawyer to know these things. Other than a small trust fund which reverts, anyway, to the museum at her death, Miss Vogel has no legal interest whatever in the Speddon estate or in the collection. Even her job here is totally in our discretion. She had better learn prudence if she wants to stick around this place.”

  “But she might raise some kind of a stink.”

  “My dear boy, she’s a nobody! I don’t know what’s got into you today. It’s not like Mark Addams to fuss like this. If you’re really worried about her, I’m sure a minimum of attention on your part would settle her hash. I’ve seen the way she stares at you. Oh, yes, I notice these things! Give her the good old limey slap and tickle, and she’ll shut her silly mouth.”

  Mark could not help bursting into laughter at so remarkable a misconstruction of Anita’s character, and his mirth helped to quell his doubts. But not altogether. “Of course it was you, Sidney, who induced me to persuade Miss Speddon to make the terms of her will less rigorous. Doesn’t that impose on me some kind of a moral responsibility to see that her intentions are carried out?”

  “You may carry out your moral obligations any way you see fit. But you are still subject to the wishes of the trustees. Don’t ever forget that, my boy. And the sole moral obligation of the trustees is to do what is best for the institution they serve. So you can be, in the immortal phrase of our almost impeached president, as ‘candy ass’ as you choose. It is not going to make a particle of difference to any of us.”

  “You mean the board won’t care about the intentions of Miss Speddon?”

  “My dear fellow, you are being positively crude. Of course the board will care. The board will care very much. But it has always been my firm tenet that the intentions of a decedent, expressed or implied, legally binding or merely morally so, must be construed, like our revered Constitution, in accordance with changing times and conditions. The one thing we can never know is what a dead person would have thought about any current issue if alive. And for that simple reason it is necessary for the dead to rely on the living to decide these questions. It isn’t a matter of should or should not. There is simply no way that the dead can choose.”

  “But aren’t you speaking of the passage of considerable time? Surely it can’t be that difficult to interpret intentions expressed only months ago?”

  And now Mark saw for the first time in his own experience—though he had certainly heard about it from others—the shadow that flitted across the features of the chairman when he found himself confronted with that rare individual who did not know how to bend before the right persuasion.

  “I think you may be forgetting, Mr. Director, that I am looking forward to our working together congenially in the years to come. Obviously you and I do not wish anything to change our happy relationship.”

  Mark swallowed hard. “Nothing will, sir, of course.”

  Sidney rose to his feet, at once beaming, and turned to the door. ‘That is just fine, fella. Just fine. But just don’t you forget it.”

  If Anita Vogel had been associated with his initial rise to power at the museum, he supposed it was only fair that the first crack in the smooth surface of his professional success should coincide with the rift in the sympathy between them. If the cheerful countenance of Sidney Claverack was now overcast with a hint of admonition, with the unpleasant reminder that future benefits were not going to be accorded without some contribution by the beneficiary, might it not have been anticipated that the woman on whose affections he had based hi
s plan of advance should be at least in part the cause?

  She burst into his office, pale with anger, the very next morning, to ask if he knew that the executors of Miss Speddon’s estate had already disposed of her doll collection at a private sale. And he hadn’t! And then a very peculiar thing took place, something he could not explain at the time or afterwards. He had been standing by the window of his office when she came in, and she had gone up to him, pressing her irate face closely, almost menacingly, to his. Certainly there was nothing in the least like a sexual advance in her attitude; on the contrary, it seemed to fling his old fantasies to the scrap heap of vulgar things with which a Vestal Virgin could have nothing to do. There was something in her white, desperate stare that appeared to slam the ivory gates of the world of art and beauty and relegate him to the lesser kingdom of Claverack, in which he was doomed to play a minor and even a humiliating role. And it might have seemed his last chance or at least his own final gesture of defiance to kiss her suddenly on her wet lips.

  “Mr. Addams, you have insulted me!” she cried in a hoarse voice, jumping back and placing a chair between them. “I see now I was a fool to imagine you could ever be a friend or that you could ever care about anything but crowds and headlines. Well, there may be one soul in this jungle of philistines who will listen to me! I’ll take my case to Mr. Hewlett. We’ll see if he will allow the museum to be plundered by you and your crooked shyster of a boss!”

  And before he could say another word, she was gone.

  8

  PETER HEWLETT was always the first down for breakfast, and although Ida, the waitress, had set the table the night before and was ready in the pantry, having lit the fire, for his ring, it was a ritual, on dark winter mornings, for the lights to be left off so that the master himself might turn the switch. He loved the moment when, after a brief flickering, the bulbs over the paintings suddenly flashed on bright, and the room would be filled with their dazzling colors: the voluptuous blues and yellows of Manet’s Venetian Canal with Gondola, the green and dusty effulgent reds of Gauguin’s island goddess and the grays and yellows of Van Gogh’s bartender in Arles, whose thick curly gray hair and mustache, whose humped shoulders and pale worried limpid eyes, were uncannily like Peter’s own reflection in the mirror over the sideboard with the guardian eagles on its cornices. A collector’s life was made up of such moments.

  Peter went to the bay window and gazed out at the gray beach beyond the lawn and the slatey stretch of Long Island Sound. He loved the dreary blackness of early winter and the gleam of the silver coffee urn before the crackle of the small fire in the grate. Then he noted that the Whistler Venetian etching was slightly ajar and he adjusted it carefully. The sudden sound of a bell somewhere in the house put him in mind of his alarm system, though of course it was not that. Augusta was simply ringing for her maid. But did the alarm system really work? There had been that terrible business at the Covingtons’, just down the road, the winter before. Someone, bold as brass, had parked a van before the front door and carted half their treasures away! But then they had been off in Europe without even a caretaker left in the house. What did such feckless people expect? Peter had, in addition to his alarm system, a couple permanently in the house and an outside watchman when he and Augusta were in town, and, of course, the maids in addition on weekends, as now.

  Yet what could maids really do? And the night watchman, mightn’t he doze off? Or be bound and gagged? Or bribed? Yes, even in the apartment on Park Avenue, with all the men in the lobby and on the elevators, how could you guard against a clever burglar who might offer a Puerto Rican at the service entrance ten thousand dollars in cash to let him up? Why not? Wouldn’t it be worth more than that to steal a Renoir, not to speak of Augusta’s diamond earrings? Oh, the jewelry, to hell with that—it was insured, anyway—but the pictures, my God, the pictures!

  Peter had rung now for his breakfast, and he tried to distract himself by greeting Ida cheerfully and watching her as she poured his coffee. He knew his moments of nervous seizure were always going to come and go—they always had—and that he must concentrate on the good moments, which were very good indeed. How many men were blessed at sixty-nine with health and wealth, a loving wife and a great collection? Was it his sin to have loved the pictures too much? But then was there any point, after the passage of almost the biblically allotted life span, to pretend he was anything he wasn’t?

  He brought the cup to his lips and drank too quickly, scalding his tongue. Fire! Oh, my God, fire! The apartment where three quarters of the collection was kept was moderately safe, but this long white structure that Augusta had refused to build of stone, this rambling two-story villa so charmingly adapted to the garden and lawns around it and to the ivy that crept over the columns of the verandas, would it not explode into a ball of flame before the pictures could be removed? There were sprinkling outlets in every room, fire extinguishers in every corridor, and each new member of the local fire brigade was invited to cocktails and instructed about the treasures—for hose water could be as damaging as the worst blaze—but what was all of this against the fury of a real conflagration? Peter, he warned himself, as he felt his heartbeat dangerously quicken, remember: each minute of life is to be lived in that minute. And there is no fire now. Enjoy your pictures now.

  He breathed more easily. He had not really burned his tongue after all. Ida had gone out to the pantry and was coming back with his poached eggs and bacon. He never tired of poached eggs and bacon. And here was Augusta, serene and understanding, with her lovely pale gray skin and hair, and sapphire eyes which still managed to be mild, and those wonderful big pearls on her ear lobes and a sweater that matched them. Why had she married him, this rare creature, who at fifty-five could have passed for ten years younger?

  “Good morning, my darling wife.”

  “Good morning, my dear.”

  “Seeing you revives me. I was thinking of fire again.”

  “What a silly thought. You know the house is as safe as we can make it.”

  “Except we could always move the best pictures to the apartment.”

  “And not have them here where we enjoy them and where we live almost half the year? You know you’d hate that. Just remember, my dear, they’re a good deal safer than they ever were with their former owners, in France or wherever. Probably in some old château with no air conditioning or firefighting equipment. You’ve done more than your duty by them.”

  Ah, she always said the right thing! When she wanted to, anyway. But then, immediately, he felt the need to pull her down a bit, perhaps because he depended on her so much.

  “Why is the table set for five?” he demanded. “Who besides ourselves and Inez and Julia are expected? You know, Gussie, I will not have children at the breakfast table. Breakfast should be a quiet meal.”

  “Inez promised Carter he would graduate from the children’s table when hé was twelve.”

  “But he won’t be twelve until next month!”

  “Really, Peter, must we be so technical?”

  “Yes! When it comes to a question of noisy breakfasts. I shall not abrogate the rule a day before the prescribed limit. Ida, will you please move Carter’s plate to the conservatory.” And he added in a lower voice while Ida was carrying this out, “Give Inez an inch, and you know what she’ll take!”

  Inez Eliot, the oldest of the three Hewlett daughters, had been abandoned by her husband, a TV anchorman in Memphis, for an eighteen-year-old girl and had come resentfully home with her brood of five. It had been agreed that she would live in the Long Island house, which her parents occupied only on weekends, until she had found something of her own, and Peter had at first relished the prospect of the big place resounding once more with the sound of children, but as the indolent Inez seemed to find herself thoroughly comfortable and well waited on, the arrangement now threatened to become permanent.

  Her presence, large and what her father distastefully deemed “dumpy” or even “doughy”—he could n
ot quite help a concealed sympathy for his errant son-in-law—crowned by an Iberian blackness of hair and brow, followed hard upon the waitress’s removal of her son’s service. Peter used to wonder if naming her for Augusta’s Spanish grandmother had not affected her looks.

  “I thought, Mummie, that Carter would be eating with us.”

  Inez’s small, red-haired, freckled boy appeared suddenly from behind his parent. ‘It’s all right, Mom. I’d rather be with the others. But tell me first, Grandpa, is that a Manet? Our new art teacher said yesterday you own one of the great Manets.”

  “All Manets are great,” replied Peter, already regretting the boy’s banishment. “And, yes, that is indeed a Manet. Do you like it? I daresay you think you could draw a more realistic-looking gondola.”

  The boy squinted for a moment at the Venetian study and then shook his head. “Nobody could paint a better gondola than that.”

  Peter grunted with pleasure as the boy ran off into the conservatory. “That lad may grow up to be a collector.”

  “Carter has a painter’s eye,” Augusta agreed.

  “I don’t know where he’d get the money to buy paintings,” Inez grumbled. “And anyway, if that’s the case, I’d rather he’d be a painter and not just a collector.”

  “‘Just’ a collector, Inez?”

  “Well, it’s not belittling collectors, is it, Daddy, to put painters ahead of them?”

  “It most certainly is. And your remark was obviously designed to put me in my place.”