30 30Laurance Van Degan rarely lunched in the fashionable restaurants of the city. Unlike his sister, Lil Altemus, who lunched out almost every day, and usually at Clarence’s, Laurance preferred lunch in the private dining room of his offices in the Van Degan Building, or, on special occasions, at the Butterfield, where he felt almost as at home as he felt in his own home. The Butterfield on Fifth Avenue in the Sixties was the least known and most exclusive of the men’s clubs in New York. Unlike the Knickerbocker Club, the Racquet Club, or the Union Club, the Butterfield was never called the Butterfield Club, simply the Butterfield, and membership was by invitation, never by application. Laurance had been invited to join by his father, Ormonde, the year after he graduated from Harvard, and Laurance had invited his son, young Laurance, on his graduation from Harvard.
The entrance to the Butterfield was sedate and identified only by a small brass plaque, so long embedded in the red brick of the building as to be virtually unnoticeable. Within, the austerity gave way to more noble trappings: red carpets, paneled walls, crystal chandeliers, and what many considered to be the most graceful marble stairway in New York, winding elegantly upward for four stories. Large undraped windows looked out on Fifth Avenue and the park opposite, and in two tufted green leather chairs in front of one of these windows sat Laurance Van Degan and his luncheon guest, Elias Renthal.
“Another martini?” asked Laurance.
“No, no, Laurance,” said Elias, raising his hand in mild protest. “I make it a point never to have more than one drink at lunch.”
“A man after my own heart,” said Laurance, who then signaled to old Doddsie, the waiter, who had been at the Butterfield as long as Laurance had been a member, to bring the menus. It had amused Laurance earlier in the day when Elias had suggested lunching at the Butterfield, saying he would like to see the famous staircase that Ruby had heard about from Jamesey Crocus since he and Ruby were planning to rip out the staircase at Merry Hill and build a new one there.
Old friends of Laurance’s like Addison Cheney, Charlie Dashwood, and Sims Lord had nodded greetings when he and Elias had entered the bar shortly before one, but none made any effort to join them, and Laurance understood, as their behavior was consistent with what his own would have been under similar circumstances. Laurance watched Elias survey the scene.
“I think it might be a good idea for you to buy a couple of thousand shares of Sims Lord’s company, Laurance,” said Elias, as his eyes rested on Sims Lord. “It’s a little high now, sixty-eight, and it’ll take a dip in a couple of weeks down to about forty-two, but then it will begin to make a climb up, up, up, and go right through the roof. It’s good to get in early and ride with the dip so as not to attract any undue attention, if you get what I mean.”
“Sims Lord’s company?” asked Laurance. He could feel himself beginning to redden. Laurance and Sims Lord had been in the same class at St. Swithin’s and at Harvard and had been ushers in each other’s weddings. Sims Lord was one of his oldest friends, and for years Ormonde Van Degan had sat on the board of Lord and Co. In the last year Elias Renthal’s tips preceding his corporate raids had enriched Laurance Van Degan by millions. It was not that Laurance Van Degan, or any of the Van Degans, needed more money than they already had, but Laurance had found that the Van Degan Foundation, which benefited museums, opera companies, ballet companies, several hospitals, and other causes, equally worthy, was hard pressed to address the problem of the homeless of the city, and he had taken to supplementing the income of the foundation, for philanthropic purposes only.
“We don’t talk business here at the Butterfield,” cautioned Laurance Van Degan. “House rule.”
“Got you,” answered Elias. “Have any women members in the club?”
“No, no, goodness, no,” answered Laurance. “And we won’t have any, I assure you, despite those women’s libbers always protesting at the Century. Twice a year we have ladies’ nights here, and that’s it.”
“Nice chairs,” said Elias, patting the arms of the green leather club chair. “I like a chair you can sink yourself into. English Regency, these chairs, aren’t they?”
“Yes, they are,” said Laurance, impressed. “You’re becoming quite the authority on furniture.”
“I’m spending enough dough on furniture, thanks to the very expensive advice Ruby’s curator, Mr. Jamesey Crocus, is giving Ruby, so I figure I should get to know something about it.”
“I hear your country house is charming. Loelia Manchester told Janet.”
“Ruby and I want you to come out some weekend real soon.”
“Delightful.”
“It’s English looking, like the Butterfield here. I said to Ruby, ‘You got all the Louis the Terrible French furniture in New York. Let’s have a little comfort in the country.’ ”
Laurance smiled appreciatively at Elias’s little joke. “I know your house well. Billy Grenville was a few classes ahead of me at St. Swithin’s.”
“The wife shot him, I hear. Is that right?”
“It seemed.”
“Where did that take place?”
“In your house.”
“Merry Hill?”
“Yes.”
“Christ, you’d think the realtor would have brought that up.”
“Perhaps she didn’t know. It all happened thirty-five years ago. People forget.”
“This club all WASPS?” asked Elias. Laurance noticed that Elias often shifted themes abruptly, as if his mind were on one thing while he was talking about another.
“WASPS?”
“Protestants, I mean. Are there just Protestants in this club?”
“Oh, goodness, no, Elias. That sort of thing went out years ago. Over there, at that table by the bar, for instance. The man playing backgammon with Herkie Saybrook is Quentin Sullivan, one of the outstanding Catholic laymen of the city, knighted by the Pope, all that sort of thing.”
“Mother was a Morgan too. That don’t hurt, I suppose.”
“Mother was a Morgan. Yes, you’re right. She was. I forgot about that.”
“I’d like to become a member here, Laurance,” said Elias.
Laurance, startled, picked up the menu and started to peruse the specialties of the day. Elias’s request was not a thing that Laurance had expected. In the name of business, Laurance Van Degan could insist that his reluctant sister invite the Elias Renthals to the wedding of her daughter, or that his equally reluctant wife include the Elias Renthals as guests in her box on the fashionable nights at the opera, or that his wife, sister, son, and niece change whatever plans they had in order to attend the forthcoming ball of the Elias Renthals, but he did not have the same altruistic feeling about membership in the Butterfield, which his own grandfather had helped to found.
“Well, we must discuss this, Elias,” he said, meaning at some time in the future.
“What’s to discuss?” asked Elias.
“May I suggest to you either the cold poached salmon, which is marvelous, or the chicken hash, which is the best anywhere in New York.”
“I’ll try the hash.”
“Marvelous choice.” Laurance picked up the pad and small pencil that Doddsie had left on the table and wrote the order down. He then tapped on a bell to signal the waiter.
“You write up your own order, huh?”
“No mistakes that way.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Van Degan,” said Doddsie, arriving.
“Here you are, Doddsie,” Laurance said, tearing off the page and handing it to him.
“Nothing first, sir?”
“I think not. Must watch our waistlines, Doddsie.”
“You have nothing to worry about, Mr. Van Degan,” said Doddsie, looking down at Laurance Van Degan’s slender waist.
“Don’t look over at my waistline, Doddsie,” said Elias, patting his girth, and the three laughed. “And I will have something first. Like a salad.”
“Yes, sir. House dressing?”
“Thousand Island.”
“We’ll go up to the dining room in a minute, Doddsie,” said Laurance.
When the waiter left, there was silence for a moment. Herkie Saybrook, on his way up to the dining room, passed the table and greeted Laurance Van Degan.
“Playing squash later today with young Laurance, Mr. Van Degan,” said Herkie.
Any mention of his son always brought a smile of pleasure to the face of Laurance Van Degan. “Mr. Saybrook, Mr. Renthal,” he said, introducing them.
“What a pleasure, Mr. Renthal,” said Herkie Saybrook. “May I present Quentin Sullivan. Elias Renthal.”
“Pleasure, pleasure,” said Elias. “I was just saying to Larry here what a nice club this is.”
No one ever called Laurance Van Degan Larry. Even as a boy in school, no diminutive of the name Laurance was applied to him. For an instant Laurance assumed the look on his face of a person who had been called by a wrong name. Then, not wanting to correct Elias in front of other people, he smiled and winked at Herkie Saybrook, as if amused by the presumption of the billionaire.
“We’ll see you upstairs,” said Laurance.
“Nice fella, Herkie Saybrook,” said Elias.
“Lovely,” agreed Laurance. “A great friend of my son’s.”
“What about it?” asked Elias.
“About what?”
“Me joining the club.”
“You see, Elias. It’s not that easy. There would be opposition.”
“All the members of the Butterfield have to have been born in New York.”
“Quentin Sullivan was born in Pittsburgh.”
“There are occasional exceptions, and in the case of Quentin Sullivan, his grandfather on the Morgan side was a member, and his great grandfather as well.”
“How would I go about joining?”
“You have to be invited to join by someone who has been a member for at least twenty years.”
“That’s you.”
“You have to have letters of recommendation from six other members.”
“That shouldn’t be difficult.”
“Ah, but it is, you see.”
“I’ve been helpful to a few people I’ve seen around here today,” said Elias.
“We should go upstairs to the dining room,” said Laurance.
“I’m starved.”
“One other thing, Elias.”
“What’s that?”
“If the person who has been proposed for membership is turned down, the member who proposed him must resign.”
“That’s the best news yet.”
“How so?”
“Don’t tell me anyone is going to ask Laurance Van Degan to resign from the Butterfield. No fucking way. Say, I’m dying to walk up that winding stairway.”
The following Saturday afternoon, on the seventeenth hole of the golf course of the Maidstone Club in East Hampton, Long Island, Laurance Van Degan said to his son, young Laurance, “I would like you to write a letter for Elias Renthal.”
“What sort of letter, Dad?” asked young Laurance.
“For membership in the Butterfield.”
“You must be joking.”
“I can’t believe what I’m hearing.”
“It would mean a great deal to me, Laurance,” said his father.
“Elias Renthal? Herkie Saybrook told me he called you Larry the other day. Herkie said he didn’t know which way to look.”
“He did, yes, he did call me Larry, but you see, he didn’t know.”
“There are so many clubs he could join, Dad, if he wants to join a club, but not the Butterfield. You can’t mean the Butterfield.”
“I do mean the Butterfield.”
“But, Dad, only a year ago you blackballed—”
“I hate the world blackballed, Laurance,” said his father, cutting in on his son’s sentence. He leaned down to place his ball on the tee.
Young Laurance began again, rewording his sentence. “You kept Whelan O’Brian from joining, when Sonny Thomas, your old friend, proposed him. You called him a mick, don’t you remember?”
“I would appreciate it if you would ask Herkie Saybrook to write a letter also, Laurance,” said Laurance, as if his son had not spoken. “I need six letters.”