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“That’s good,” the crouching girl said, taking one picture after another. “That’s very good.”
“Let me introduce you,” Rudolph said. “My sister, Mrs. Burke, my associate, Mr. Heath. Miss … uh … Miss … I’m terribly sorry.”
“Prescott,” the girl said. “Jean will do. Please don’t pay any attention to me.” She stood up and smiled, rather shyly. She was a small girl, with straight, long, brown hair, caught in a bow at the nape of her neck. She was freckled and unmade-up and she moved easily, even with the three cameras hanging from her, and the heavy film case slung from her shoulder.
“Come on,” Rudolph said, “I’ll show you around. If you see old man Calderwood, make admiring noises.”
Wherever they went, Rudolph was stopped by men and women who shook his hand and said what a wonderful thing he had done for the town. While Miss Prescott clicked away, Rudolph smiled his modest smile, said he was glad they were enjoying themselves, remembered an amazing number of names.
Among the well-wishers, Gretchen didn’t recognize any of the girls she had gone to school with or had worked with at Boylan’s. But all of Rudolph’s schoolmates seemed to have turned out to see for themselves what their old friend had done and to congratulate him, some sincerely, some with all too obvious envy. By a curious trick of time, the men who came up to Rudolph with their wives and children, and said, “Remember me? We graduated in the same class?” seemed older, grosser, slower, than her unmarried, unimpeded brother. Success had put him in another generation, a slimmer, quicker, more elegant generation. Colin, too, she realized, seemed much younger than he was. The youth of wi
“You seem to have the whole town here today,” Gretchen said.
“Just about,” Rudolph said. “I even heard that Teddy Boylan put in an appearance. We’ll probably bump into him.” Rudolph looked over at her carefully.
“Teddy Boylan,” she said flatly. “Is he still alive?”
“So the rumor goes,” Rudolph said. “I haven’t seen him for a long time, either.”
They walked on, a small, momentary chill between them. “Wait a minute for me here,” Rudolph said. “I want to talk to the band leader. They’re not playing enough of the old standards.”
“He sure likes to keep everything under control, doesn’t he?” Gretchen said to Joh
When Rudolph came back to them, the band was playing “Happy Days Are Here Again,” and he had a couple in tow, a slender, very pretty blonde girl in a crisp, white-linen dress, and a balding, sweating man somewhat older than Rudolph, wearing a wrinkled seersucker suit. Gretchen was sure she had seen the man somewhere before, but for the moment she couldn’t place him.
“This is Virginia Calderwood, Gretchen,” Rudolph said. “The boss’s youngest. I’ve told her all about you.”
Miss Calderwood smiled shyly. “He has, indeed, Mrs. Burke.”
“And you remember Bradford Knight, don’t you?” Rudolph asked.
“I drank you dry the night of the graduation party in New York,” Bradford said.
She remembered then, the ex-sergeant with the Oklahoma accent, hunting girls in the apartment in the Village. The accent seemed to have been toned down somewhat and it was too bad he was losing his hair. She remembered now that Rudolph had coaxed him to come back to Whitby a few years ago and was grooming him to be an assistant manager. Rudolph liked him, she knew, although looking at the man she couldn’t tell just why. Rudolph had told her he was shrewd, behind his Rotarian front, and was wonderful at getting along with people while carrying out instructions to the letter.
“Of course, I remember you, Brad,” Gretchen said. “I hear you’re invaluable.”
“I blush, ma’am,” Knight said.
“We’re all invaluable,” Rudolph said.
“No,” the girl said. She spoke seriously, keeping her eyes fixed, in a way that Gretchen recognized, on Rudolph.
They all laughed. Except for the girl. Poor thing, Gretchen thought. Better learn to look at another man that way.
“Where is your father?” Rudolph asked. “I want to introduce my sister to him.”
“He went home,” the girl said. “He got angry at something the Mayor said, because the Mayor kept talking about you and not about him.”
“I was born here,” Rudolph said lightly, “and the Mayor wants to take credit for it.”
“And he didn’t like her taking pictures of you all the time.” She gestured at Miss Prescott, who was focusing on the group from a few feet away.
“Hazards of the trade,” Joh
“You don’t know my father,” the girl said. “You’d better give him a ring later,” she said to Rudolph, “and calm him down.”
“I’ll give him a ring later,” Rudolph said, carelessly. “If I have the time. Say, we’re all going to have a drink in about an hour. Why don’t you two join us?”
“I can’t be seen in bars,” Virginia said. “You know that.”
“Okay,” Rudolph said. “We’ll have di
“I’ll insist on minuets,” Knight said. “Come on, Virginia, I’ll treat you to a free orange pop, courtesy of your father.”
Reluctantly, the girl allowed herself to be pulled away by Knight.
“He is not the man of her dreams,” Gretchen said, as they started walking again. “That’s plain.”
“Don’t tell Brad that,” Rudolph said. “He has visions of marrying into the family and starting an empire.”
“She’s nice,” Gretchen said.
“Nice enough,” said Rudolph. “Especially for a boss’s daughter.”
A heavy-set woman, rouged and eye-shadowed, wearing a turbanlike hat that made her look like something from a movie of the 1920s, stopped Rudolph, winking and working her mouth coquettishly. “Eh bien, mon cher Rudolph,” she said, her voice high with a desperate attempt at girlishness, “tu parles français toujours bien?”
Rudolph bowed gravely, taking his cue from the turban. “Bonjour, Mlle. Lenaut,” he said, “je suis très content de vous voir. May I present my sister, Mrs. Burke. And my friend, Mr. Heath.”
“Rudolph was the brightest pupil I ever taught,” Miss Lenaut said, rolling her eyes. “I was certain that he would rise in the world. It was plain in everything he did.”
“You are too kind,” Rudolph said, and they walked on. He gri
“I never heard that story,” Gretchen said.
“There’re a lot of stories you never heard.”
“Some evening,” she said, “you’ve got to sit down and tell me the history of the Jordaches.”
“Some evening,” Rudolph said.
“It must give you an awful lot of satisfaction,” Joh
Rudolph reflected for an instant. “It’s just another town,” he said offhandedly. “Let’s go look at the merchandise.”
He led them on a tour of the shops. Gretchen’s acquisitive instinct was, as Colin had once told her, subnormal, and the gigantic assembly of things to buy, that insensate flood of objects which streamed inexorably from the factories of America saddened her.
Everything, or almost everything that most depressed Gretchen about the age in which she lived, was crammed into this artfully rustic conglomeration of white buildings, and it was her brother, whom she loved, and who softly and modestly surveyed this concrete, material proof of his cu
After the shops, Rudolph showed them around the theater. A touring company from New York was to open that night in a comedy and a lighting rehearsal was in progress when they went into the auditorium. Here, old man Calderwood’s taste had not been the deciding factor. Dull-pink walls and deep-red plush on the chairs softened the clean severity of the interior lines of the building and Gretchen could tell, from the ease with which the director was getting complicated lighting cues, that no expense had been spared on the board backstage. For the first time in years she felt a pang of regret that she had given up the theater.