5

FORGET THEM, FORGET THE men falling…

It was Conroy who came to pick them up on Friday afternoon, in a long Mercedes limousine with jump seats. Mr. Hazen sent his apologies, Conroy said, he was unexpectedly detained at the office, but would come down later in the evening. Strand sat in the front seat beside Conroy. Leslie, Eleanor, Caroline and Jimmy sat in the back. Strand had been a little surprised when Eleanor had said that she’d like to go. She loved the Hamptons, especially out of season, she said, and had a lot of friends there she’d like to see. That was another thing he hadn’t known about Eleanor, Strand thought, as he put down the phone—that she was familiar with the Hamptons and had many friends there. He wondered what other revelations she had in store for him and for that matter what information Leslie, Jimmy and Caroline, now all chattering briskly in the back of the car, would divulge to him when they thought it convenient to do so.

“By the way,” Conroy said, “there’s a station wagon in the garage you can use if you want to get around.”

“I don’t drive,” Strand said, “and neither does my wife. But Eleanor has a license.” She had owned a beat-up old Ford the last two years in college. He turned and said, “Eleanor, did you hear what Mr. Conroy said? There’s a station wagon in the garage you can use.”

“Does that go for me, too?” Jimmy asked.

“Of course,” Conroy said.

“I didn’t know you had a license, Jimmy,” Strand said.

“A friend loaned me his car for a few afternoons,” Jimmy said, “and I tootled around and took the test.”

Strand shook his head. Something else he hadn’t been told about his family.

Conroy asked if they wanted him to turn the radio on and get some music, but Leslie vetoed the idea. “We never can agree on what we want to hear,” she said, “and I don’t want my ride to be spoiled for Jimmy and Caroline and Eleanor nor theirs for mine.”

Strand enjoyed the trip. It was a balmy evening, the sun still shining. Conroy drove well and after they got out of Queens the traffic was light and the big Mercedes smoothly ate up the miles through the lines of trees of the Parkway. In a way Strand was glad that Hazen had been detained at his office. If he’d been along Hazen would have kept the conversation going and Strand preferred to ride in silence. Conroy didn’t speak and Strand felt no need to listen to the holiday babble going on behind him. He was glad they had all decided the weekend would be a treat and he looked forward to seeing the inside of Hazen’s house. You could tell a great deal about a man from seeing the way he lived. Hazen was a new breed of animal for Strand and he was growing more and more curious about the lawyer. Strand was by nature cautious about quick impressions of people and had not yet made up his mind about what he really thought about Hazen. The circumstances under which they had met had been bizarre and with all his talking, Strand realized as he thought about it, Hazen had managed to find out a great deal about the family without telling anything much about himself except that his family had arrived in New York in 1706 and had never gone to Ohio. His absolute silence about his own immediate family, for example, was well beyond the bounds of ordinary discretion and except for confessing that he was a lawyer and went to symphony concerts, he had confined himself almost entirely to impersonal abstractions. From Who’s Who Strand knew a considerable amount about the public man; the private one was still concealed.

While waiting for the car to come to pick them up Eleanor had said of Hazen, “That man wants something.”

“Why do you say that?” Strand had asked.

“A man like that always wants something,” Eleanor had said, and he had been annoyed at her cynicism. In Strand’s code you didn’t accept hospitality, especially of this lavishness, from somebody about whom you had misgivings, even if they were only as vague as his daughter’s.

Leslie, who had a proprietary interest in the man whose wounds she had tended and admired the stoical way he had behaved when he was in pain, had snapped, uncharacteristically, at Eleanor, “If you feel like that, why don’t you just go someplace else for the weekend?”

“Sorry,” Eleanor had said. “I thought we were in America. Freedom of speech. Guaranteed by the Constitution, and all that.”

“Hush, everybody,” Strand had said. “This is a holiday.”

Jimmy had just grinned, pleased that for once Eleanor and not he was on the receiving end of a rebuke. Caroline had paid no attention to what was going on, but had sat dreamily humming to herself, cradling her racquet in its new case.

Looking out at the swiftly passing spring countryside, Strand thought about the exchange between his wife and his daughter and wondered if what Eleanor had said had some truth in it, then decided it was just idle spite, born of Eleanor’s jealousy or distaste for some of her superiors under whose orders she chafed on her job and whom, rightly or wrongly, she identified with Hazen. For himself, Strand decided that he would accept Hazen at face value. The face so far, he had to admit, was somewhat obscure, but he had detected no signs of malice or desire for advantage. Quite the opposite. If anything, after the news about the son, Strand pitied the man and sympathized with him. If Hazen was using the family to alleviate his loneliness, that hardly could be called manipulation. Strand remembered his fleeting suspicion of Hazen’s intentions about Caroline and smiled. Hazen would hardly have asked them out to his house en masse if he was plotting to satisfy his lust for the seventeen-year-old daughter of the family.

He dozed, the steady motion of the big car lulling him, and awoke only as the car slowed down and turned into a private road leading from a stone gate through a long alley of high trees toward the sea, whose rumble could now be heard.

Conroy stopped the car in a raked gravel courtyard and tooted the horn. “Here we are,” he said and they got out of the car. An enormous rambling white clapboard house loomed up against the clear twilight sky.

“Man,” Jimmy said, whistling, “that’s some hunk of architecture.”

“It was built by Mr. Hazen’s grandfather,” Conroy said. “They thought big in those days.”

The old American doom, Strand thought, from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations, obviously didn’t apply to the Hazens. The grandfather could be proud of the grandson.

Conroy touched the horn again, and in answer to the signal a man and a woman came hurrying from the house.

“Mr. and Mrs. Ketley,” Conroy said. “They take care of the house. They’ll bring up your bags.” He introduced them to the servants. The man wore black trousers and a starched white cotton jacket. His wife was dressed in a black uniform, with a white apron. They were both middle-aged, pleasant-appearing people who looked as though they had worked hard all their lives.

“I’ll be saying good-bye to you now,” Conroy said. “I have to go back to town to pick up Mr. Hazen at the office and bring him back here.”

“You’re going to make this whole trip all over again?” Leslie asked.

“It’s nothing,” Conroy said. “We should be here by eleven.”

“If we’d known, we could have waited until Mr. Hazen was ready to leave,” Leslie said. “It seems like such an imposition.”

“Mr. Hazen wouldn’t have heard of it,” Conroy said. “Make yourself at home, he told me to tell you, and ask the Ketleys if there’s anything you want. Dinner is ordered for you.” He got into the car, faithful servitor, bicycle rider, anonymous, forever on duty, messenger in neutral livery, man of many small useful talents. He started the engine, made a sweeping turn in the courtyard and the taillights of the Mercedes disappeared down the alley of trees.

“This way, please,” Mr. Ketley said, leading the family toward the front door of the house, which was flanked by two huge carriage lamps that snapped on as they walked across the flagstones that bordered the entrance.

As they went into the front hall, from which a broad staircase with a mahogany rail curved up to the next floor, Mr. Ketley asked if they would like to be shown their rooms or prefer to have a drink first to refresh themselves after the journey.

Strand said he’d stay down for a while, but refused the drink with thanks and strolled into the living room while the Ketleys led the way upstairs for the others. The room was large, with dark wood wainscoting on which hung paintings by Pissarro, Vlaminck, Chagall and Dufy, as well as some abstract oils by painters whose work Strand could not identify. A grand piano stood in one corner, closed. There were flowers everywhere in large bowls and low, comfortable sofas and easy chairs of a nondescript, unpretentious style that contrasted with what looked like authentic Early American wooden chairs, tables and desk. There was a big fireplace, with a fire laid but not lit. The windows and a door along one side fronted on the ocean. Hazen might complain that he had too many bedrooms vacant for his psychic comfort, but his creature wants were certainly handsomely taken care of. Still, there was little in the house, or at least in the living room, that spoke of its owner. And except for the piano and the paintings there was no indication of the particular interests of the inhabitants. Through a half-open door, Strand glimpsed a small library. He would examine the books at another time. He didn’t want Mr. or Mrs. Ketley to catch him prying. The house had obviously been built at the turn of the century, and its fixtures and furnishings looked as though they had been supplied as needed by several generations with varying tastes.

Strand opened the door that led out to the terrace and the roar of the sea filled the room. He stepped out and looked across at the dark expanse of the Atlantic in the twilight. The sea itself was calm, but long rollers from far out swept in and crashed on the beach. Just below the terrace a fine mist rose from the surface of the swimming pool, reflecting the lights from the house.

Strand breathed deeply, luxuriating in the tonic salt air. Far off along the dunes there were other lights from houses that also faced the ocean, but there were no immediate neighbors. If the grandfather had wanted peace, he had chosen the site for his mansion shrewdly. Little more than a hundred miles from New York City, there was the feeling of limitless space, of a benevolent climate whose silence was broken only by the sound of the sea and the cries of gulls. Standing there, Strand thought, you could forget that your fellow citizens were struggling to breathe in the city, crowded inhumanly in fetid subway cars, assaulted by the clamor of traffic, forced to waste their days in mindless occupations. On the border of the sea, the air fragrant with the odor of salt and the scent of grass and flowers, for one evening at least, you could forget the wars that were at that moment being fought all over the earth; for one evening forget the men falling, the towns going up in flames, the bloody clash of races, tribes, ambitions.

Yes, Strand thought, as he went back into the house, closing out the rumble of the Atlantic as he shut the door, Leslie was right, a little sea air won’t do me any harm.

There was a fire going in the dining room fireplace when they went in to dinner and candles on the table. Eleanor had changed into pale blue slacks and a cashmere sweater and Jimmy had taken off his necktie, which, Strand supposed, Jimmy believed made him appropriately dressed for a country weekend. Leslie, who rarely wore slacks, although she had fine legs, had put on a long, printed cotton skirt and a blouse that left her arms bare. Caroline had scrubbed her face in the shower and looked, Strand said to himself, dotingly, new-minted. To Strand, sitting at the head of the table, his family presented a picture of decorous and attractive health and in the light from the fire and the candles Leslie looked like a beautiful, only slightly older sister to the two girls who sat on either side of him. “Believe it or not,” she had whispered to him when she came down to dinner, “there’s a Renoir drawing in our room. A nude. Imagine that. In a bedroom.”

It was a splendid meal, clams and delicious bluefish, served by Mr. Ketley. He poured a white French wine and they all took some, even Caroline, who said, in explanation of her inaugural indulgence, “Well, this is the first time I’ve ever had dinner in front of a fireplace. Isn’t it sexy?”

Jimmy raised his glass in a toast. “Here’s to the rich,” he said.

Caroline giggled, impolitely, Strand thought, as she sipped at her wine and Strand glanced surreptitiously at Mr. Ketley to see how the man was reacting to this tribute to his employer. But Mr. Ketley was wrapping a towel around a second bottle of wine and he seemed not to notice what was said at the table. Still, taking no chances, Strand raised his glass and said, “To the kind hospitality of our absent host.”

By the wink that Jimmy flashed him he knew that Jimmy understood what his father was doing. He would have to speak to Jimmy later and remind him to look to his manners for the weekend.

After dinner Mr. Ketley came around with a box of cigars. Strand started to shake his head, then reached into the box and took one. As he used the clipper that Mr. Ketley gave him to cut the end of the cigar, Leslie looked at him doubtfully. “Are you sure want—” she said.

“If at her age Caroline decided that this was the night for her first glass of wine,” Strand said, “I guess her father is old enough to try his first cigar.” He puffed diligently as Mr. Ketley held a lighter for him. The smoke tasted surprisingly good.

“Mr. Ketley,” Jimmy said, “I think I’d like one, too.”

“Jimmy,” Leslie said.

“I like the way it looks on Pops,” Jimmy said. “Maybe it’ll improve my appearance, too.” He took a cigar from the box, examined it approvingly. “Havanas. Sneaked into the country under the guns of the Gringo Imperialists. I’m doing my bit for World Revolution.”

Definitely, Strand thought, as Jimmy lit the cigar and clenched it between his teeth at a jaunty angle, definitely I’ll have to have a little talk with him about what is and what isn’t permissible to say in this house. He was pleased to see that after the first few puffs Jimmy waved the cigar around, twirling it in his fingers, and smoked it only enough to keep it alight. It was less than half smoked when Jimmy crushed it out in an ashtray as he and Eleanor said their good nights and went off in the station wagon to Bridgehampton, where, according to Eleanor, there was a cozy bar with a lot of nice people usually hanging around it and where the owner played a good jazz piano in the evenings.

Caroline said she wanted to watch television and settled herself in front of the set in the small library, and Strand and Leslie decided to take a walk on the beach. Dressed warmly against the evening chill and holding hands they strolled on the hard sand left by an ebbing tide, occasionally feeling a little sting of salt on their faces from the waves foaming onto the beach. The moon was up in a clear sky and there was a brisk wind and on the horizon they could see the lights of a ship going east.

Leslie squeezed her husband’s hand. “Only perfect,” she murmured.

Strand sat in one of the easy chairs in front of the dwindling fire in the living room. The house was quiet and he was alone. Leslie was upstairs preparing for bed and she liked solitude for the ritual of creaming her face and brushing her hair. Eleanor and Jimmy had not yet come back and the Ketleys had long ago gone to their room at the rear of the house. Strand sighed contentedly as he watched the dancing patterns of the fire. Then he heard the sound of a car driving up to the house and stopping.

A moment later Hazen and Conroy came into the living room and Strand stood up to greet his host. “Good eve—” he said, then stopped. There was something wrong with Hazen. Under the dark felt hat that sat squarely on his head his eyes stared straight ahead, unseeingly, and he walked slowly and stiffly, with great care, as if he would stagger if he went any faster. At his side, Conroy looked haggard, his hands out, ready to catch his employer if he started to fall. As Hazen came closer, without seeming to notice Strand standing in front of him, there was a strong smell of whiskey. He was very drunk. Conroy made a little apologetic grimace at Strand as Hazen sprawled, still with his hat on, into a deep easy chair.

“Conroy,” Hazen said, speaking very slowly and deliberately, “I want a whiskey. And bring the soda bottle. I’ll pour the soda myself. I don’t want you goddamn drowning the Scotch.”

“Yes, sir,” Conroy said and went over to the sideboard that served as a bar.

“Excellent secretary, Conroy,” Hazen said, still not looking at Strand. “Excellent chauffeur. But unde—undependable when it comes to drink. Strand,” he said, without turning his head, “you’re a lucky man. You do not have to deal with thieves. I, on the other hand, deal almost exclusively with thieves, week in, week out. Week in, week out. It isn’t love that makes the world go round, Strand, as they say, it is greed, naked, over—overpowering, criminal greed. I tell you, Strand, if the laws of the land were ever enforced, three-quarters of our most re—respected citizens would be in our country’s jails. For Christ’s sake, Conroy, am I going to have to wait all the fucking night for my drink?”

“Coming, sir.” Conroy, cupbearer, among other things, hurried over with the glass and the small bottle of soda.

Without looking up, Hazen put out his hand and Conroy put the glass into it “Now, pour the soda,” Hazen said. “Gently, gently. Enough!” Conroy, dose-dealer, had barely put a thimbleful of soda into the whiskey. “Conroy does not drink and does not approve of others drinking.” Hazen glared up at his secretary. “Am I being accurate, sir?”

“More or less, sir,” Conroy said, bowing a little.

“More or less.” Hazen nodded solemnly. “Conroy is a more or less man. A teetotaler, he tolls the drunkards’ knell. An anal type. Beware of teetotalers, Strand, they will have their total revenge.” He laughed hoarsely, then carefully, stiffly, like an automaton, raised the glass to his lips and drank. “For this relief,” he said, “much thanks.” He laughed hoarsely again. “Strand,” he said, “I travel in the country of despair. Do you believe in God?”

“Yes.”

“Conroy,” Hazen said, “get the hell to bed.”

“I thought perhaps you might need me,” Conroy, ashen with fatigue but ever available, said nervously. “I’m not tired, really.”

“I’m tired,” Hazen said. “You tire me. Get out of here. I can go to bed by myself. I don’t need you to assist in my dreams. Get out of here, man. Go.”

“Yes, sir,” Conroy said. “Good night, sir. Good night, Mr. Strand.” He went out the front door, watchdog of power, uneasy at dismissal.

“There’s a room for him over the garage,” Hazen said. “Conroy. I don’t like the idea of his sleeping in the same house with me. Understandable, isn’t it, Strand?”

“Well…” Strand mumbled, at a loss. “I don’t know him and…”

“Understandable. Did I ask you if you believed in God?”

“Yes.”

“And what did you answer?”

“I said I did.”

“You are out of joint with the times, Strand. Do you believe in the Ten Commandments?”

“I would say yes,” Strand said, feeling foolish at this drunken catechism in the middle of the night.

“One meeting with my col—colleagues,” Hazen said, “and your beliefs would change. Honor thy father and thy mother. It’s late, Strand. I like to sit here alone and have a little nightcap in the waning hours and reflect. Reflect. I mentioned my admiration for Mr. Buster Keaton on our walk, did I not?”

“You did.” Now what? Strand thought, regretting that he had not gone up with Leslie before Hazen arrived.

“He knows the whole thing is a cosmic joke. Our plans fail, our achievements are der-derisory, we are balked at every turn, we are doomed to slip on every banana peel, and he accepts it all stoically, with silent dignity, to the sound of divine laughter. A lesson for us all.” Hazen laughed harshly, the sound like a cry of pain. “Reflect,” he said. “I’m sure you would rather join your charming wife upstairs, the holy bonds of matrimony, as it were, than stay down here and be embarrassed by my re—reflec—flections on religion. I am perfectly well sir.” For the first time, he turned his head and looked at Strand. His face was desolate. “Despite some evidence to the contrary, I am not a drinking man. Thou shalt make no graven images. I am surrounded by graven images. Weep for the times, Strand, and sleep well. Good night, sir.”

Strand hesitated. He was troubled. Under the drunken but magisterial calm of his host, in the alcoholic hours of the night what turmoil lay, what appeal for help? He shook his head. Better not to get involved. Sea air or no sea air. “Good night,” he said and went out of the room, feeling profoundly inadequate. As he climbed the stairs he knew he wasn’t going to tell Leslie about Hazen. If he were to describe the scene she’d rush downstairs and try to reason with Hazen and put him to bed and he knew that wouldn’t do, it wouldn’t do at all.

When he got into bed she reached for him, sleepy and warm. “I’m bushed,” he said. It was the first time he hadn’t responded to her. There always has to be a first time, he thought, as he tried to sleep.

When Strand came down the next morning, he saw Hazen sitting at the breakfast table, reading the Times. He was dressed for tennis and wearing an old sweater against the early chill. The scar on his bald head was still an ugly red, but Strand could see that the wound was closed and well on its way toward healing. Hazen’s cheek was still slightly discolored, but his skin otherwise was a healthy pink. As Hazen rose and shook his hand, Strand saw that his eyes were clear and his hand steady. After that night, Strand thought.

“I hope you slept well,” Hazen said, his voice calm and courteous. “Ketley brought another copy of the paper for you…” He pointed to the sideboard, where a fresh copy lay. “I dislike having my paper all fussed up and I imagine most fathers of a family are a bit like me in that respect, too.”

“I must confess I am,” Strand said as he seated himself opposite Hazen. If Hazen chose to ignore the events of the night before, to pretend that nothing had happened, no grief revealed, Strand certainly was not going to bring them up. “I’ll read it later. But please don’t let me interrupt you.”

“I’ve read enough for the moment,” Hazen said, folding the paper and putting it to one side. “The usual disasters. Was the dinner all right?”

“Perfect.”

Hazen nodded. “They’re an excellent couple, the Ketleys. What would you like for breakfast?” he said, as Mr. Ketley came in from the kitchen. “Juice, bacon and eggs?”

“That would be fine.” At home he refused to allow Leslie to get up to make him breakfast and made do with a cup of coffee and a roll. He was always starving by noon.

“You heard what Mr. Strand wants?” Hazen said to Ketley.

“Yes, sir,” Ketley said.

“Oh, by the way,” Hazen said, “will you tell Ronny that if he wants to have a catch this morning, I’ll be ready for him after my tennis match.”

“I’m sure he’ll be waiting for you,” Ketley said and went back to the kitchen.

“Ronny’s his grandson,” Hazen said. “He’s eleven. He pitches for his Little League team. I give him a target to throw at.” He poured himself a cup of coffee. “I’m terribly sorry I had to let you shift for yourselves last night,” he said, “but there was no getting away. Conroy is sleeping the sleep of the just. I had a refreshing nap in the car while he drove. I heard your children come in about two in the morning…”

“They didn’t disturb you, I hope.”

“Not at all. I just happened to hear the station wagon drive up. They were as quiet as could be.”

“They went to a bar in Bridgehampton that Eleanor knows about.”

“Amazing how young people can hang out in dingy bars for hours on end. Especially since, according to Ketley, they hardly drink at all.”

As Ketley came in with a glass of orange juice and a fresh pot of coffee, Strand wondered what else the man had included in his report about the family.

“I trust Caroline wasn’t with them on their nocturnal revels,” Hazen said.

“No. She looked at television for a while and went to bed early.”

“Good,” Hazen said. “I’ve arranged for some young people to come over this morning for tennis. They’re pretty sharp and she’ll have to be at her best to keep up with them.”

“I see you plan to play, too.”

Hazen shrugged. “I may join in for a set or two. They’re polite young people and they’ll respect my age. They’ll try to keep the ball within strolling distance when they hit it at me.” He sipped at his coffee. “The arrangements are all right?” he asked.

“The arrangements?” Strand asked, puzzled.

“I mean, you’re all comfortably installed and all that? No lumps in the bed or leaking plumbing or noisy pipes?”

“A lot better than comfortably,” Strand said. Maybe, he thought, Hazen had actually forgotten the night. If so, so much the better. “Magnificently. It’s a delightful house.”

Hazen nodded absently. “It’s a nice house. Made for hordes, of course. The families of our fathers. I often am tempted to sell it. Except on a shining morning like this.” He waved toward the windows, flooded with sunlight, the ocean glinting. “If you want to swim later, the pool’s heated.”

“No, thank you,” Strand said. His legs were skinny and he didn’t like to be seen in bathing trunks. “I’ll just laze around.”

“Whatever you like,” Hazen said. “There are no rules here.”

What he means, Strand thought, is that the rules are so set that nobody notices them anymore.

Ketley came in with the eggs and bacon and toast and put them in front of Strand. “Sir,” he said to Hazen, “there’s a telephone call for you.”

“I was afraid there would be,” Hazen said. “Put it into the library for me, please.” He stood up. “Excuse me,” he said to Strand. “I’m afraid this is going to be a long one. Make yourself at home.” He strode out of the dining room. Strand noticed that his legs were long and muscular and could have been those of a young man. All that bicycle riding.

He shook his head, marveling at the constitution, both physical and mental, of the man. He was glad Conroy wasn’t at the table. There would be a touchy moment when they next met. Well, he decided, I’m not going to let it spoil my day. He ate his breakfast contentedly, spreading marmalade over his toast and drinking three cups of coffee while he read the Times. Hazen didn’t come back to the table, and when he was finished, Strand went out on the terrace and lay back in a reclining chair, his eyes closed, his face turned to the morning sun.

The tennis court was off in the garden behind the house, protected from the wind by tall, neatly clipped hedges. Caroline and Hazen and two young men were starting to play when Strand reached the court. He had gone upstairs to see if Leslie wanted to watch the game with him, but Leslie was still in bed, eating her breakfast off a tray that Mrs. Ketley had brought her. She told Strand that this was one Saturday morning in her life that she was just going to do nothing. “If the bliss becomes boring after a while,” she said, “I may put on some clothes and come down to the court. But don’t expect me. My feeling is I’m just going to luxuriate here until lunch.” She said nothing about his unaccustomed refusal of the night before.

Strand settled himself in a canvas chair in the little shaded pavilion beside the court. It was a hot day and he could see that Hazen was already sweating, his white cotton sun hat wet just above the brim. The alcohol is coming to the surface, Strand thought. At least it shows he’s human. Hazen and Caroline were partners and they seemed, to Strand’s inexperienced eye, just about as good as the two young men, who had obviously been playing expertly coached tennis since childhood. Hazen had a cool, accurate game and hit the ball as hard as the others. He didn’t run much, but always managed to be in the right place and made as many winning shots, it seemed to Strand, as Caroline, who did a great deal of bouncing about and dove in showy acrobatic leaps at the net. She was obviously enjoying herself and smiled smugly, Strand thought, when she scored an ace on a service or put away an overhead smash. The young men had started rather condescendingly by hitting balls at half speed and not going for the corners, but after Caroline and Hazen won the first two games, they began to slam the ball and flick it along the lines, showing no indulgence either for the age or sex of their opponents.

The set went seven-five and was won by the young men. By that time some other players, two more young men and a heavyset girl, had arrived and introduced themselves to Strand in a spate of names he could not remember. They were not the kind of names Strand read off the roster of his classes at school. They seated themselves alongside Strand in the shade of the pavilion to watch the end of the match, impartially calling out “Good shot” or saying “Wowee!” after an especially hard-fought point.

“That’s it for me, ladies and gentlemen,” Hazen said, when he hit the set point into the net. “Thank you very much. Caroline, excuse me for failing the team.”

“I missed a couple of key ones,” Caroline said politely. She took losing with the same lightness as winning, Strand noticed, approvingly. No competitor himself, he disliked people who were sullen when they were on the short end of the score. Hazen, of course, despite his apology, was as unruffled as ever. His wins and losses, Strand could see, were in other fields.

“I ought to be making the excuses,” Caroline said to Hazen, as she came toward the pavilion. “Don’t you want to play another set? I’d love to sit out and tell my father my secret troubles.”

“No,” Hazen said. “My old bones have had it for the day. Time for the younger generation.” He came over to the pavilion, taking off his hat and mopping his forehead with a towel. He was a little redder than usual, but he wasn’t breathing hard and if his bones felt old, it didn’t show in the way he strode off the court.

There was a big pitcher of iced tea in the refrigerator at the back of the pavilion and Hazen poured some for Caroline and the two young men who had played with them, while the newcomers warmed up on the court.

“Hey,” one of Caroline’s opponents, the taller and better player of the two, whose name was Brad or Chad, said to her, “you’ve got quite a game there, lady. We could clean up in mixed doubles. You going to be out here all summer?”

“No,” Caroline said.

“Pity. You’d be an ornament to the season.” He was good-looking, in what Strand would describe as the standard American blond way, with an easy, self-assured manner. Maybe, Strand thought, I should have been more serious about my tennis when I was young.

“Caroline,” Hazen said, putting down his glass of iced tea, “you can come out here, you know, whenever you want. You might enjoy playing in some of the local tournaments.”

Caroline looked quickly at her father. “I’d love to,” she said. “If I have the time.”

Strand said nothing. After the scene with Hazen the night before, he wasn’t sure he liked the idea of Caroline becoming a constant visitor to the house.

“Come on, Caroline,” the tall young man whose name was Brad or Chad said, “let’s us be partners and whomp them.”

As they went out onto the court together to play one of the new boys and the heavyset girl, Hazen said, “I’m going to take my shower now. Watching the kids play depresses me.”

“I’ll walk back with you,” Strand said. “See what the rest of the family is up to.” He waved to Caroline, who was running her fingers through her hair, brushing it back, preparing to receive service. He waited for Hazen to put on his sweater and the white hat and then started toward the house at his side.

“I enjoyed that game more than any I’ve played in months,” Hazen said. “Thanks to your delightful daughter.”

“You played very well, I thought,” Strand said.

“I kept my end up, that’s about all. The day I know I can’t I’ll donate my racquet to the Smithsonian Institution. Four, five years…” His voice trailed off, the onset of age in its tone. He was still sweating and he mopped at his face with the towel. “Those young men,” he said, “are a little old for your daughter. At this season the boys her age are away in school or college and can’t make it for the weekends. That fellow she’s playing with now is twenty-four. He’s in his father’s firm in Wall Street, seems to take all the time off he wants. Very sure of himself with the ladies.” Hazen glanced significantly at Strand. “Single and otherwise.”

“He seemed gentlemanly enough to me.”

Hazen laughed. “I wasn’t suggesting that he goes around raping children. I just thought it might be a good idea to inform Caroline that he’s much older than she. If you don’t mind my saying so, she seems to have led a most sheltered life until now. Not like the run of young girls I see at the parties around here in the summertime, at all. You know, rich children of split homes, parents given to drink and promiscuity…well…”

“Her mother is very protective,” Strand said, annoyed at the implicit warning. “The baby of the family and all that.” Then he felt that he sounded as though he was blaming Leslie and added, hastily, “I’m sure Caroline knows how to take care of herself.”

“It would be a pity if she didn’t,” Hazen said gravely. “She has the quality of innocence. It’s too rare to be jeopardized. As for her tennis…” Hazen shrugged. “She has a surprisingly accurate notion about how good she really is.”

“Not good enough,” Strand said. “She told me she’d told you.”

Hazen smiled. “For one so young to say something like that is rare, too. Has she ever said anything to you about what she wants to do after she finishes her schooling?”

“Not really,” Strand said. “I guess she’s like most young people her age these days who have no special talents—waiting to see what turns up.”

“Didn’t she tell you that she wants to go to an agricultural college out west?”

“Agricultural…?” Strand repeated incredulously. Why in the name of God would she want to hide something like that from him? “This is the first I’ve heard of it. Why? Did she tell you?”

Hazen shook his head. “She just said she wanted to go someplace where life was simpler and she wasn’t surrounded by concrete.”

“It’s true City College isn’t surrounded by prairie,” Strand said. “But it’s a good enough school and it’s cheap and she’d be living at home.” He resolved to question his daughter when they were alone together.

“The money mightn’t be all that much of a problem,” Hazen said. “There’s always the possibility of a scholarship.”

“Not with her marks. Eleanor got one, but Caroline’s no scholar, even if it’s a father who says so.”

“She told me something else that might be useful,” Hazen said. “They’re giving more and more athletic scholarships to women these days, and…”

“Her tennis may be all right for Central Park, but she knows herself she’d never get anywhere with it…”

“Not her tennis,” Hazen said. “I agree with you. But I noticed how quick she is. She runs extraordinarily fast. I asked her if she’d ever raced and she said she’d won the hundred yard dash in her school field day last month.”

“Yes,” Strand said. “I remember. Still—field day at a small private school…”

“I asked her if she’d been timed and it turns out she did the hundred in ten-four. For a girl who’s had no training and hasn’t been coached that’s most impressive. With good coaching she might get close to Olympic time. It’s a pity that her school doesn’t have any interscholastic program or a lot of good schools would be after her. I know the public relations man for an institution called Truscott College—that’s in Arizona, which is west enough for anybody—and I believe if he mentioned that I’d seen a good prospect for their teams my friend could get their physical training department interested. And the school has a strong agricultural section.”

“Did you mention any of this to Caroline?” Strand asked worriedly, sensing vast new family complications looming before him.

“No,” Hazen said. “I thought it would be wiser to talk to you and her mother before I raised any hopes.”

“Thank you,” Strand said dryly, annoyed, despite himself, that his daughter had vouchsafed information about herself to an almost complete stranger, information that she had kept hidden from her parents. At home when they had people in, she answered questions in monosyllables and took the first opportunity to go to her room. “I’ll have a little talk with that girl.”

“Anyway,” Hazen said, “I thought you and your wife should at least know what the possibilities are.”

“We live in funny times,” Strand said, smiling. “When a girl can run herself into an education. Maybe I’ll buy a stopwatch and time my pupils instead of annoying them with examinations.”

“If you decide you and Caroline want to explore the situation, I’d be glad to call my friend at the college.”

“It’s very kind of you to offer to help, but I imagine you have enough other things to think about, without worrying about how my daughter can learn to be a farmer three thousand miles away from home.”

“I gathered she doesn’t intend to go in for farming. She said she’d like to study to be a veterinary after and that would be a proper start.”

“Veterinary…” Strand couldn’t keep the dismay out of his voice. And he remembered his conversation with Judith Quinlan in which she had said, jokingly, that if she gave up teaching she would be a veterinarian. Was it some new female aberration taking hold suddenly in the heart of the city? “Veterinary,” he repeated. “Why, we’ve never even had a cat or a dog in the house. Did she tell you what gave her that idea?”

“I asked her and she seemed shy—embarrassed, perhaps—about answering,” Hazen said. “She just mumbled something about private reasons. So I didn’t press her.”

“What do you think about the idea?” Strand said, almost aggressively.

Hazen shrugged as they walked along. “I believe in this age it is the fashion to allow young people their own choice of careers. It’s as good a policy as any, I suppose. It’s my feeling—perhaps an illusion—that I would be a happier man today if my father had not dictated what I was to do with my life. Who knows?” He turned his head and peered curiously, his eyes narrowed, at Strand. “Supposing, all other things being equal, when you were your daughter’s age, you could have made a choice—would you have chosen as you did?”

“Well,” Strand said uncomfortably, “no. My dream was to be a historian, not to feed a few hand-me-down facts about the past to unruly children. If I could have gone to Harvard or to Oxford, spent a few leisurely years in Europe among the archives and libraries—” He laughed ruefully. “But I had to make a living. It was all I could do to find enough odd jobs to keep me going long enough to get my B.A. at City College. Perhaps if I had been stronger…. Well, I wasn’t stronger. Old ambitions.” It was his turn to shrug. “I haven’t thought about them for years.”

“Supposing,” Hazen said, “somehow, you had gone to Harvard, had the years in Europe, been able to become the man you had hoped to be, seen your name honored on the shelves of libraries, wouldn’t you have been—well”—he searched for the word—“more satisfied, shall we say, than you are now?”

“Perhaps,” Strand said. “Perhaps not. We’ll never know.”

“Do you want me to call the man at Truscott?” Hazen, Strand recognized, was gifted at putting witnesses in a corner, where the answer had to be yes or no.

Strand was silent for a moment, thinking of what the apartment would be like with Caroline gone for months at a time while she was at school, then permanently after that. He and Leslie, too, would then have to face up to the problems of vacant rooms. “I can’t give you an answer now,” Strand said. “I’ll have to talk this over with my wife. Don’t think I’m ungrateful for your interest, but…”

“Gratitude has nothing to do with it,” Hazen said crisply. “Remember there’s a lot I have to be grateful for. It’s well within reason to believe that I wouldn’t be standing here talking to you today—or anywhere, for that matter—if it hadn’t been for Caroline’s intervention in the park.”

“She didn’t even know what she was doing,” Strand said. “Ask her. It was just a reflex action on her part.”

“And all the more admirable for that,” Hazen said. “There’s no great rush. Speak to your wife and the girl and let me know what you decide. Lunch is at one. I’ve invited some friends, among them two men you might be interested in talking to—a history professor from Southampton College and an English instructor.”

The perfect host, Strand thought. If his guest were a test pilot Hazen probably would have dug up two other test pilots to compare crashes with at lunch.

As they reached the house Strand saw a tall, very thin boy, standing in the driveway, holding a fielder’s glove and a catcher’s mitt. “There’s the other half of the battery,” Hazen said. “Would you mind umpiring?”

“I’ll do my best,” Strand said.

“Good morning, Ronny,” Hazen said. “This is Mr. Strand. He’ll call the balls and strikes.”

“Good morning, sir.” Ronny handed Hazen the catcher’s mitt. Hazen punched at the pocket of the mitt as they walked across the driveway to the lawn that bordered it. He put his towel down as home plate and Ronny, his face very serious, paced off to his pitching distance. Hazen crouched behind the towel, bending easily, and Strand took his position behind him, trying not to smile.

“You get five warm-up pitches,” Hazen called to the boy, “and then it’s play ball. The usual signals, Ronny. One finger for the fast ball. Two for the curve, three for the pitchout.”

“Yes, sir,” Ronny said. His windup was elaborate, with a succession of little jerking motions and a final turning of his body, so that his back was facing the plate before he turned and threw.

Strand recognized the style from watching the Yankees on television. The boy had obviously been impressed by Luis Tiant, the old Cuban pitcher who had the most spectacular pitching motions in baseball. Once again he had to mask his smile.

The ball came over the towel slowly. Strand guessed that the boy had intended a curve.

After the fifth pitch, Strand called, “Batter up.”

“Right in there, baby,” Hazen said. “Breeze it past ’em.”

Ronny bent over to peer at the sign, very Tiant-like, lifted his left leg and threw.

“Ball one,” Strand barked, getting into the spirit of the game Hazen was playing with the boy.

Hazen looked over his shoulder, glowering. “What’s the matter, Ump, you blind? Aren’t you going to give us the corners?”

“Play ball,” Strand said loudly.

Hazen winked broadly and turned back to face the pitcher.

After fifteen minutes in which Strand generously had counted ten strikeouts against four walks, Hazen stood up and went out to Ronny and shook his hand, saying, “Good game, Ronny. In another ten years you’ll be ready for the big leagues.” He gave his mitt to the boy, who was smiling for the first time, and he and Strand went into the house.

“That was a nice thing to do,” Strand said.

“He’s a good kid,” Hazen said carelessly. “He’ll never amount to anything as a ballplayer, though. He’s about a half second too slow and he’ll never get there. The day he realizes it will be tough for him. I used to love the game and when the day came that I knew, in my bones, that I’d never hit the curve I could’ve cried. So I turned to hockey. I had the talents.” He smiled unpleasantly. “Brutality and cunning. Thanks for the umpiring. See you at lunch. I’m ready for my shower now. You’d be surprised what work it is to bend your knees like that for ten minutes.” He went toward his wing of the house.

Strand didn’t go up to the bedroom where he supposed his wife was still enjoying the comfort of doing nothing on a Saturday morning. He wasn’t ready to talk to Leslie just yet. Instead he went out to the pool where he found Eleanor and Jimmy sunbathing.

Eleanor was stretched out on a mat on her stomach, in a bikini, with Jimmy squatting beside her rubbing lotion on her back. She had undone the straps of her bra so that she wouldn’t have any white lines across her eventual tan and her position, with her breasts almost showing, was, at least for Strand, decidedly erotic. Her body, with its slender waist, swelling haunches and satiny skin, reminded him disturbingly of her mother’s, and after a first glance, as he sat down on the edge of a beach chair, Strand kept looking out to sea. Eleanor and Jimmy were playing a word game, one of them giving a letter and the other adding to it with the object of forcing the opponent into the letter that would make a word and thereby losing the point.

“E,” said Eleanor. “Hi, Dad. How’s Miss Wimbledon 1984 doing out there?”

“Making the boys run,” Strand said, wishing she’d tie up her bra.

“V,” Jimmy said.

“Obvious, Jimmy,” Eleanor said. Then to Strand, “We ought to give the old terror of Central Park a unanimous vote of thanks for all this splendor she’s introduced us to. I, Jimmy. I haven’t seen our genial host yet. What’s he planning for our entertainment?”

“Lunch,” Strand said.

“Sorry about that,” Eleanor said. “Will you make my excuses? I’m asked out to lunch. Man I happened to meet at Bobby’s Bar’s coming to pick me up for lunch with the lit’ry set. He writes poetry. For the little magazines. Don’t look so aghast, Dad.” She laughed. “The poetry’s pretty poor but he’s got a regular job. I, Jimmy.”

“Happened to meet,” Jimmy said. “He was waiting for you last night, gasping. C.”

“Astute of you, Jimmy.” Strand didn’t know whether she meant Jimmy was astute for saying C or for realizing that the meeting the night before had been prearranged. She sighed. “You’re a clever fellow. I challenge you. What’s the word.”

“Evict,” Jimmy said triumphantly.

“Got me,” Eleanor said. “You have a tiresome way with words. He always beats me,” she said to her father. “And I’m supposed to be the smart one in the family.”

“You’re done,” Jimmy said, putting the cap on the bottle of lotion. “Want to play some more?”

“Not for the moment,” Eleanor said. “The sun stuns me. I’ll just bake until my cavalier comes to claim me.”

“I’m going to take a few turns in the pool,” Jimmy said, standing. He was tall and thin, like his father, with his ribs showing and his big fierce nose jutting below the same beetling full dark eyebrows. Without pleasure, Strand made the comparison between his son and the young men he had just been watching on the tennis court. Where they were lean and long-muscled, Jimmy was plain skinny and didn’t look as though he could last even one set on the courts. Jimmy professed to find all forms of exercise sweaty and life-shortening. When he was teased by Caroline about his sedentary ways, he quoted Kipling’s jibe about the gentleman athletes of Britain—“flannelled fools at the wicket…muddied oafs at the goals.” At least there was no danger, Strand thought, that Hazen would attempt to send Jimmy off to school on an athletic scholarship.

Jimmy dove into the pool with a great splash and happily paddled about in a stroke that Strand would have been hard put to describe.

“Who’s the cavalier, as you call him, who’s coming to take you to lunch?” Strand asked.

“You don’t know him,” Eleanor said.

“Is he the one you told me about? The Greek island one?”

Eleanor hesitated for a moment. “The same,” she said. “He thought it would be a good idea for us to meet on neutral ground. You don’t have to see him if you don’t want to.”

“Of course I want to,” Strand said.

“He’s presentable, if you’re worried,” Eleanor said.

“I wasn’t worried about that.”

“Good old Dad.”

“Do you think it’s polite to go off like that without telling Mr. Hazen? After all, you haven’t even seen him here yet and you’ve spent the night in his house.”

“It’s not my fault he didn’t make dinner last night,” Eleanor said. She sounded defensive. “Anyway, he’s paying his debts to Caroline and you and Mother, and I’m sure that’s enough for him.”

Debts, Strand thought. An unpleasant way of putting it. “Will you be back for dinner?”

“If you want me to.”

“I want you to.”

Eleanor sighed. “I’ll be back.”

“Eleanor,” Strand said, wishing she would sit up and tie her bra, “I’d like to ask you a question.”

“What is it?” She sounded wary.

“It’s about Caroline. Do you think she’s old enough to go away to college?”

“I went at her age,” Eleanor said. “Anyway, I thought she was going to City. That’s not away. It’s just uptown.”

“Supposing we changed our mind about it?”

“What are you and Mother going to do about her tuition and board and all that? Take on other jobs? I don’t think at your age…”

“What if we thought we could manage it?”

“How?”

“Somehow.” He was afraid Eleanor would hoot at the idea of Caroline in a track suit.

Finally Eleanor tied the bra straps behind her back and sat up. “If you want the truth,” she said, “I think she’d be better off at home. She’s younger than I was at her age. By a long shot. For one thing, there never are any boys around the house or calling her on the telephone. Haven’t you noticed that?”

“Not really,” Strand admitted.

“When I was her age, the phone was ringing day and night.”

“It certainly was.”

“She thinks she’s ugly,” Eleanor said. “She thinks she turns boys off. That’s why she likes to beat them on a tennis court. I at least confound men with my brains.” She laughed complacently. “It’s more dignified—and more permanent.”

“Ugly?” Strand was shocked. “Caroline?”

“Parents,” Eleanor said. “Do you think when I’m a parent I’ll be blind, too?”

“But she’s not ugly. Just now, Mr. Hazen went out of his way to tell me how delightful she was.”

“Geriatric praise,” Eleanor said. “Not worth one eighteen-year-old squeeze in a movie theater.”

“What if I told you that I think that she’s—well—if not exactly beautiful—a very pretty girl?”

“Geriatric fatherliness,” Eleanor said curtly. “You asked me what I thought about my sister. Now, do you want me to humor you or do you want me to tell you what I think?”

“That’s a loaded question,” Strand protested.

“Loaded or not, what do you want?”

“There’s only one answer to that,” Strand said, trying to sound dignified.

“She thinks she’s ugly because of her nose. It’s as simple as that. Kids have been making fun of it since she was in the first grade. It’s your nose and it’s great on you and it’s okay on Jimmy, he’ll grow into it. But for her—with noses like Mother’s and, let’s face it, mine, in the family, it’s the doomful curse of the Strands. Understand me, Dad,” she said more gently, seeing the stricken expression on her father’s face, “I’m not saying she’s right to feel the way she does or that she isn’t a marvelous little girl, but that’s the way it is. If a girl feels she’s not pretty and she’s off on her own, away from the loving support of good old Mother and Dad and a nice safe bed to run home to every night, she’s very likely to…oh, hell, to fall into the arms…into the life of the first boy or man who says she’s pretty, no matter what his motives are and how good or bad he is for her. You asked for my advice? Keep her home with you until she grows up.”

Jimmy was climbing out of the pool, shaking the water off his torso and pulling at his ears.

“Don’t ask him any questions,” Eleanor said. “That’s more advice.”

“Some day, Eleanor,” Strand said, “I’m going to ask you what you think I ought to do with my life.”

“Stay as you are.” She got up and kissed his cheek. “I couldn’t bear it if you changed.”

Strand was alone on the terrace. Eleanor had gone up to dress for her lunch and Jimmy had wandered off along the beach. Strand was glad that Leslie hadn’t come down. When he was worried, as he was now, she invariably sensed it and she would have pried out the reasons and her blissful lazy morning would have been ruined. One member of the family tormented by the problems of life in the twentieth century was enough for today.

Strand was considering going up and getting into bathing trunks and taking a swim in the pool. For the moment there was nobody around to notice the poverty of his legs or the resemblance of his gaunt frame to Jimmy’s. Just as he was about to stand up Mr. Ketley came out of the house. “Mr. Strand,” Mr. Ketley said, “there’s a gentleman here for Miss Eleanor.”

“Tell him to come out here, please,” Strand said.

When the young man came onto the terrace Strand rose to greet him. “I’m Eleanor’s father,” he said, and they shook hands. “She’ll only be a minute. She’s getting dressed.”

The young man nodded. “I’m Giuseppe Gianelli,” he said. “Embarrassingly melodious.” He laughed. Strand guessed that he was twenty-eight, twenty-nine. He had a deep easy voice and he was strikingly handsome, large green eyes that seemed to have golden flecks in them, a dark face and thick black curly hair. He was almost as tall as Strand and was dressed in white slacks, sandals and a blue polo shirt that left his muscular tanned arms bare, stretched tightly over his wide shoulders and was loose around the middle. Strand was thankful that he hadn’t been caught in bathing trunks.

“Nice little place they have here,” Gianelli said, looking around. “Somebody had thoughtful ancestors.”

“My son said, ‘That’s some hunk of architecture,’ when he saw it last night.”

Gianelli chuckled. It was an easy, soft sound that went with his slow, slurred voice. “Good old Jimmy,” he said. “He had quite a time for himself last night.”

“What did he do,” Strand asked, “get drunk?”

“Oh, no, nothing like that.” Gianelli smiled. His face, which was almost sculpturally masculine in its bold lines of brow, nose and jaw, softened suddenly and surprisingly. “If he’d been drunk, naturally I wouldn’t say anything about it to his father. No, he had only a beer or two. He gave a concert.”

“On what?” Strand had prevailed upon Jimmy not to take his electric guitar along on the weekend, convincing Jimmy that there were limits even to a millionaire’s hospitality.

“Some girl had a guitar lying around,” Gianelli said. “She played a song or two. You know, one of those mournful, why am I alive, why is the world so mean to me sort of jingles. When she finished, Eleanor asked her if she’d lend her guitar to Jimmy and Jimmy went to town, along with the pianist. He really can play, you know, Mr. Strand.”

“So far,” Strand said, “I haven’t educated myself enough in the new music to fully appreciate him.”

“You should have been there last night,” Gianelli said. “He must have played more than an hour. Didn’t Eleanor tell you?”

“We had other things to discuss this morning,” Strand said and knew that he must sound stuffy to the man. “Jimmy keeps saying he’s looking for a new sound and I’ve taken it for granted that when he finds it he’ll tell me the news.”

“I don’t know what he found last night,” Gianelli said, “but he found something.”

“In the future,” Strand said, “perhaps I ought to accompany my children when they go out at night.”

“You could do worse,” Gianelli said affably. “Do you mind if I sit down?”

“Sorry,” Strand said. “By all means.”

They both sat.

“Eleanor said she’d just be a minute,” Strand said. “You know what a woman’s minute is when she’s getting dressed to go out.”

“Eleanor’s pretty good about being on time,” Gianelli said. “Five minutes here and there. I have no complaints on that score.”

He talks as if he owns her, Strand thought resentfully. He was careful not to show his resentment. If she was prompt with Giuseppe Gianelli, she was behaving unusually. She was notorious in the family for her tardiness. You’re in for some surprises later on, young man, Strand thought, meanly. If there is going to be a later on.

“Has Eleanor told you anything about me?” Gianelli asked, turning his deep green eyes on Strand, looking frank and candid, man-to-man. This lad has been around, Strand thought. “I mean, anything of any interest?”

“She said you wrote poetry,” Strand said. “Then she told me not to look aghast, the poetry was poor and you had a regular job.”

Gianelli chuckled. It was hard for Strand not to be warmed by the soft, agreeable sound. “She’s something, isn’t she?”

“Something,” Strand agreed. “She didn’t recite any of the poetry to me.”

“This is your lucky day, Mr. Strand,” Gianelli said.

“She didn’t tell me what your job was, either.” Good God, Strand thought, I’m sounding like an old-fashioned father inquiring into the qualifications of a suitor to his daughter’s hand in marriage. “She knows a great variety of young men and they all seem to have peculiar occupations.”

“Mine isn’t so peculiar.” Gianelli sighed. “I wish it was. I work for my father. He’s a building contractor. I deal in cement, bricks, labor relations, trucks. I consider it a temporary aberration on my part. My father doesn’t have a high regard for my poetry, either. He thinks I came under the influence of Communist faggots at the Wharton School of Economics.” He laughed, dismissing his father.

The middle generation, Strand thought. Father in shirtsleeves, sonny in white slacks in the Hamptons. Gianelli. Contractor. Reader of newspapers, moviegoer who had seen The Godfather, Strand wondered about connections with the Mafia. Cosa Nostra. In the movie the son was a college graduate, too. Ashamed of himself for the thought, he switched the subject “Eleanor did tell me you were thinking of going to a Greek island on her vacation this summer.” He looked searchingly at Gianelli to see if there was any reaction. There was none.

“Spétsai,” Gianelli said carelessly. “I have some friends there who have a house on the water. It’s within invitation distance of Onassis’s former place. Dead now. The idea came up late one night, the way ideas like that do.”

The idea of spending three weeks on an island with a woman who was not his wife, within invitation distance of a Greek shipping tycoon, had never come up in Strand’s life, at any hour of the day or night, but he didn’t think it was necessary to tell Gianelli that. “By the way,” he said, “where did you meet Eleanor?”

“Oh, it was just one of those evenings at Bobby’s saloon,” Gianelli said easily. “Last summer. We were at the bar and we fell to talking.”

Fell to talking, Strand thought, remembering how he had carefully found out Leslie’s address and telephone number, had waited a year before daring to call, had sweated under the glares of her father and mother when he had finally appeared in her family’s living room to take her to dinner and the theater. Fell to talking and then an island in the Aegean and after that, what? This was a generation, he thought, discomforted by nothing. In principle, he approved. But he wasn’t sure of what he felt sitting there in the sunshine waiting for the young man to take his daughter to a lit’ry lunch and then where?

“We found out we had interests in common,” Gianelli was saying.

“Like what?” Strand asked.

“Nondrinking.” Gianelli grinned. “Wallace Stevens. What we like about New York and what we hate about it.”

“That should have kept the conversation going for a while,” Strand said dryly.

“Till about three a.m.”

“Aside from writing poetry, what would you want to do?”

“Do you really want to know?” Gianelli looked at him seriously.

“Of course.”

“I was the editor of the newspaper at Brown. That’s where I went to college. I liked that. Maybe it was just because I liked seeing my name in the newspaper. Vanity. But I think it was more than that. I’d hoped my father would finance me into a small-town newspaper somewhere. Where I’d live in a house with some grounds around it and be my own boss, small crusades and all that—putting the rascals in jail, keeping the unions honest, blowing the whistle on the deals, getting a decent congressman elected, cleaning up the library board and the zoning regulations, no more Vietnams or Watergates, little things like that. Romantic, idealistic, rich boy American dreams. Putting my imprint on the age, within my modest abilities. My father said, ‘Be quixotic with your own money.’ End of interview.”

How willing the new generation was to talk—about themselves, Strand thought. But admirable in its way. “Have you told Eleanor any of this?”

“All.”

“What does she think?”

“Thumbs down,” Gianelli said. “You’re on your own, baby! She’s climbing to the seat of power over the prostrate bodies of graduates of the Harvard School of Business and the idea of putting on a green eyeshade and editing an article on a high school graduation in a little backwater town has no charms for her. Do you think I’m a fool, too?”

“Not necessarily.” Gianelli’s idea was more than a little attractive to Strand, but there were also the dreadful statistics of the annual bankruptcies of small businesses in America and the gobbling up of frail independent newspapers to be considered. “You won’t have much time for Greece, though.”

“There’re better things than Greece,” Gianelli said. “Well, now you know the worst about me.” He grinned again. “Should I leave now and let you tell Eleanor you kicked me out of the house?”

“Stay where you are.” Strand stood up. “I’ll see what’s keeping her.”

But as he was going toward the house, Eleanor came out, looking crisp and haughty, nose short and straight and in the air, a bright scarf tied around her head. “Hi,” she said. “You’re early.”

“On time,” Gianelli said, standing. “Never no mind. I filled in your father on my faults and virtues. Ready?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be. Don’t I look ready?”

“You look glorious,” Gianelli said.

“That will have to do,” Eleanor said. “See you later, Dad.”

“Later when?” Strand asked.

“Just later.” She smiled at him and took Gianelli’s arm.

They went off. Together, Strand had to admit to himself, they did look glorious. Being a father had its ups and downs.

After they had gone, Leslie came on to the terrace, dressed for lunch in the long cotton skirt and her hair piled up on her head in the fashion that always gave Strand a sensation that was somewhere between adoration and anguish. “How do I look?” Leslie asked, uncertainly.

“Glorious,” he said.

Strand didn’t enjoy his lunch, although there were perfect cold lobsters and paté and cold wine and avocado salad on the buffet arranged on the terrace, now shaded with a huge awning. And the sea was blue and calm and the two teachers from Southampton College and their wives were amiable enough and moderately intelligent. He kept looking at Caroline, or, more accurately, at her nose. It certainly wasn’t disfiguring, he thought, angry with Eleanor for having made such a fuss about it; in another age it might even have been considered handsome on a woman. But he couldn’t help but notice that while the three young tennis players and two other girls who had been invited were all eating together in a high register of conversation and laughter, Caroline had chosen to eat off to one side with her mother and the wife of the history professor.

Goddamnit, he thought, Eleanor was right. Geriatric fatherliness. He wanted to go over to Caroline and take her in his arms and say, “My darling, you’re beautiful,” and weep into her soft blond hair.

Instead, he turned to the history professor beside him and said, “I’m sorry, sir, what was that you were saying?”

The professor, who looked a little like Einstein and knew it and had let his hair grow into a mane like the scientist’s, stared at him queerly for a moment. “I was asking you how you treated the subject of Vietnam in your classes. In the public school system, I mean.”

“We don’t teach modern history.”

“Vietnam isn’t so modern,” the professor said. “After all, our problem with it goes all the way back to World War II. History is a seamless web after all. Boys went directly from our halls into the armed forces. We had a crisis of conscience that nearly split our department in two.”

Strand decided that the man was not to be taken seriously. “It was not included in our curriculum,” Strand said, knowing he was being rude, knowing that it wasn’t because of anything the man had said, but because of his conversations with Hazen and Eleanor that morning and seeing Caroline eating at her mother’s side. His department hadn’t been split and neither had he. He had deplored the war, had written his congressman, signed petitions at the risk of his job, had said at his dinner table, with Jimmy listening, that he approved of the boys who had fled to Sweden or had registered as conscientious objectors. But he couldn’t say that over cold lobster and paté de foie gras in the sunny picnic atmosphere on the edge of the sea.

Luckily, at that moment, sparing further conversation with Einstein, Hazen came over. “Excuse me, Mr. Strand,” he said, “may I talk to you for a moment?”

“Of course,” Strand said and stood up. He followed Hazen into the house.

“I’m sorry to disturb you,” Hazen said in a low voice in the empty living room, “but I have to leave for the city now. That telephone call at breakfast this morning. I’m just going to slip away. I don’t want to break up the party with a lot of farewells and explanations. You understand, don’t you?”

“Certainly.”

“Make my apologies to your wife. Even though we’ve spent so little time together this weekend,” Hazen said, “I’ve enjoyed having you all here. All of you,” he said emphatically. “The next time I’ll cut the telephone wires.”

“It’s been a memorable holiday already,” Strand said. If Jimmy had been there, and had known what had happened the night before and had overheard the conversations of the morning, he would have said, “You can say that again, brother.”

“You’ll call me during the week, won’t you?” Hazen said as the two men shook hands. Conroy was waiting in the hallway, patient charioteer, dressed in a dark business suit, and he and Hazen went quickly out the door to the waiting Mercedes.