At work, there were moments when Tom Bradshaw believed Nicky Three was, after all, an apparition — a ghost he had conjured up with his fanciful imagination and breathed life into with his almost neurotic desire to bring Eric Hall back to the land of the living. He cringed inwardly with shame at the irrational thought that only he had seen Nicky Three, that he had talked to the empty air which surrounded him at the Y and that all present had thought him a lunatic. Tom had seen people on the streets of New York who talked with, argued with, and even screamed at people only they could see. Had he become one of them? He eyed his co-workers, especially his secretary, in search of a clue to his own sanity. The only information his secretary confided to the girls she lunched with was that “Mr. Bradshaw’s been kind of depressed this week. I think his love life is in big trouble.”
But at home Tom was surrounded by traces of Nicky which illusion, no matter how real to the beholder, could not have left behind. The shirts and the sweater Nicky had bought Tom. The undershorts and jeans and terry robe Nicky had brought to and left in Tom’s apartment. And mostly the bottle of champagne which Nicky had brought the day he discovered Eric’s photograph. Perversely, Tom refused to remove it from the kitchen counter where it still stood as a monument to Nicky’s departure and Tom’s stupidity.
He didn’t know Nicky’s phone number but he did know something of Uncle Alexis and was sure the number would not be listed.
He checked and it wasn’t. He didn’t know Nicky’s address but he knew the apartment building was on West End Avenue and Eighty-something Street. Hard as he tried he could not remember the exact cross street. So one chilly Saturday morning, amid people toting Christmas trees and hurrying to and from department stores with gaily wrapped packages in their arms, he walked the ten blocks along West End Avenue, from Eightieth to Ninetieth, east and west sides of the blocks, staring at every young man he passed.
“Nicky! Good to see you. I just happened to be in the neighborhood. How about a beer?”
“Nicky! What a surprise…”
“Nicky! I’ve been searching all over this fucking town for you.”
“Nicky! I miss you…how about coming back home.”
It began to snow, a wet New York snow, and still he walked, hatless, up and down the ten-block rectangle until he began to get odd looks from doormen who ordinarily don’t give passersby a second glance. He finally returned to his apartment chilled, wet and alone.
Nicky Three, who had fallen out of the sky and into the swimming pool of the West End Y. M. C.A., had gone back from whence he came, wherever the hell that was. “Face it. He’s gone.”
Gradually, Tom began to resume his old lifestyle, falling back into it as easily as he had fallen away from it. “Long time no see, Tom. Been away?”
“Yeah. Palm Beach.”
“You don’t look tan.”
“It rained…every fucking day for a month.”
They were all unchanged. The Carrs, the Brandts, the pretty girls and closet cases, but they now appeared to Tom as flat, two-dimensional people who had said and done all they were ever going to say and do. Had he really found them interesting? No, he never had, he now admitted to himself. They were never real friends, but representations of what he wanted from life. And what did he want? Nicky? Eric? “No, goddammit, both of them.”
Amy finally got her return bridge match: herself and Dicky opposite Tom and Nancy. “I hear you’ve been to Palm Beach, Tom,” Amy said, adjusting her glasses before fanning out the cards just dealt her.
“Who told you that?”
“Laurie Carr, I think.”
“Well, it’s not true.”
“Why would she make up a story like that?”
“She didn’t make it up. I did.”
Nancy giggled. “Tom, you’re a nut.”
“Are we playing cards or making chit-chat?” Dicky injected, adjusting his glasses.
“What was the bid?”
“Two hearts.”
“Christ, don’t do that to me.”
“I just did.”
“If you weren’t away then where have you been? I haven’t seen you at one party all season.” Amy talked like a character out of a Noel Coward play.
“Having an affair.”
Like a Greek chorus slightly out of sync Amy said, “With whom?” and Nancy said, “With who?”
“Laurie Carr. That’s why she’s passing around the Palm Beach story.”
“Bullshit.” Amy occasionally broke from Noel.
“I can’t concentrate,” Dicky moaned.
“I’ve never known a single girl you’ve had an affair with, Tom.” Amy, relentless as always, continued to probe.
“That’s because I only have affairs with married ones.”
Nancy dropped her cards and laughed heartily. “Very good, Tom. Do you get it, Amy? You said a single girl and…”
“I get it, Nancy, and you’re not funny, Tom.”
“I don’t think I am either, Amy. In fact I’m very handsome.”
“Would you cut the crap and play cards. I’m not interested in Tom’s sex life.”
You were when Eric Hall was around, you stupid little punk, Tom thought as he tossed down a card and trumped his partner’s ace.
“Tom!” Nancy shouted.
Amy smiled majestically.
Tom had accepted Amy’s invitation not out of a keen desire to see any of those assembled but to return the picture of Eric to where it belonged — Dicky’s photograph album. He knew that sooner or later the picture would be discovered missing and that Amy, bless her cold heart and sharp mind, would recall just who they had last shown the album to. Returning it had proved easier than Tom had anticipated. Before Nancy arrived and while Dicky and Amy were busy elsewhere, Tom had been left alone in the den. It had taken less than a minute to replace the picture but, with Tom’s mind on other things and in spite of Nancy’s usually brilliant playing, it had cost him sixty-five dollars to accomplish the feat.
Amy Culver was jubilant.
Tom finally went back to his swimming exercises at the Y. If a ghost could make love the way Nicky had, Tom thought, then I have wasted a good many years sitting on hotel bar stools — I should have been cruising séances. He thought, briefly, of paying daily visits to the Y in search of Nicky as he had done before but, like his useless canvassing of West End Avenue, he now realized that Nicky knew where to find him and if Nicky was ever going to return, which now seemed unlikely, he would do so of his own volition.
The Y, like Tom’s friends, remained unchanged. After his long hiatus the regulars welcomed him back with open eyes and Tom, reckless in his depression, dangled it like he had never dangled it before. Finding himself alone in the showers with a man Tom thought made his home in the shower room of the West Side Y. M. C. A., Tom lewdly pointed to himself and said, “You’ve been after this a long, long time.”
The man froze under the spray of water, wide-eyed and speechless.
Tom cupped himself. “You want it? You got it.”
Recovering, the man looked about the tiled room like a rabbit and stuttered, “Not…here…I…I live just around…”
“Here and now, or never.”
The rabbit, obviously of little faith, opted for the here and now. Tom felt ashamed, dirty and degraded. Christmas was a few days away. The tree in Rockefeller Center was ablaze with lights as were the trees along the island in the middle of Park Avenue. Department stores overflowed with shoppers and the streets were crowded with tourists and merrymakers and the sound of brassy carols which only the Salvation Army bands know how to render.
The depression that had descended upon Tom since Nicky’s departure appeared to want to settle in for the winter solstice. But Tom Bradshaw was a fighter and a good fighter knows, above all else, when to retreat. That time had come.
Tom decided to leave New York: not for a week in Florida or St. Thomas or the ski slopes of Vermont, but away, and far away, forever. There was nothing for him here and he now felt there never would be. He was less than a little fish in a big pond. He was a hanger-on. He moved in a circle that would always regard him as an outsider, the odd man needed only to even off a hostess’s dinner table.
It would soon be a new year, so why not a new life to go along with it? He had a few dollars saved to help him get started. He would give the bank their two-week notice and then…Rome, Paris, London. London would be best…no language barrier to overcome. Surely he could find work there. Tom poured himself a stiff bourbon and began to make plans.
London…the Prince of Wales was taken but Charlie had a viable younger brother. Tom envisioned a conversation between the queen and her second son. “But Andrew, my dear, you cannot make Thomas Bradshaw the Duchess of York.”
§ § § §
As Tom made plans for a new life, so Alexis Romaine’s ended as unobtrusively as he had lived it. Marie knew her brother was dead the moment she entered his room to rouse him for supper. The stillness which met her soft call was not the peaceful quiet of the sleeper but the absolute tacitness of death. Marie Romaine knew it well. She looked down upon her brother who had died, an old man, in his sleep and thought of the screaming headlines which had proclaimed his violent death at an early age many years ago. She heard her father’s pleading voice… “What must we do, Sonny? What must we do?”
And her mother’s calm response… “Pray, Nicky, the way the monk taught us.”
Marie, with very little effort, sank to her knees and prayed for the soul of a man who was born a prince of the largest nation on earth and died a recluse without a country. Then, her eyes dry and her small figure perfectly erect, she walked down the long passage to a room at the far end of the apartment and knocked gently on the door.
Nicky was sitting in a comfortable chair, his shoeless feet propped up on his bed, reading. He smiled as Marie entered. “Supper ready?”
“He is dead, Nicky.”
The young man was stunned as we are all stunned when the inevitable finally happens. The book fell to his lap and he began to get out of his chair. “There is nothing for you to do, Nicky.”
“I must go to him, Aunt Marie.”
The old woman nodded, knowingly. “Yes. But first we must talk.”
“The arrangements. Yes, I must…”
She held up her hand to silence him. “There is nothing for you to do,” she repeated. “I am going to take Alexis back to England and put him to rest beside our mother and father. That is what they would want and what he desired.”
“But arrangements must be made. If we start now we can be in England the day after tomorrow.”
“I still have some connections in England and I will be back there tomorrow. You will stay here.”
Fear showed in his blue eyes. He heard, he understood, but he refused to believe. “I can’t let you do this alone. It’s my duty.”
“Your duty is to yourself. We have kept you too long.” He made a move to get up but she stepped forward and restrained him by placing her hands on his shoulders. “Listen to me, Nicky. Just sit and listen. You are like my own son. No, you are more than that. You are the son I never had. Can you understand that difference? Do you think I want to leave you now…especially now when you are all I have left in the world? No, Nicky. No, no, no.” The tears she had not shed for her brother now flowed freely for his son. “You must learn to live on your own. Here and now, you must do it. Soon, too soon, I will join Alexis and the others and then what will you do? Now, Nicky, you must make the break now.”
“But you’re all I have and I love you,” he protested. “I loved him, too…and…and I’m so afraid, Aunt Marie. I’m so afraid.”
He buried his face in her bosom, sobbing, and she held it there, stroking his hair and rocking him gently in her strong arms. “Cry, my Nicky, cry. It is good to cry for it washes all the badness away and leaves behind a clean slate.”
When he withdrew from her arms he turned his head, refusing to face her. She sat on his bed and with one finger lifted his chin until their eyes met. “See, it is better already.”
Nicky nodded and attempted a smile.
“Yes, it is. Now let me tell you something, my Nicky. Once, a long time ago, I too was afraid. Not of life, but of death. And when it was decided that I should live I knew that the greatest gift of all is the gift of life. And that is the gift I am giving you. I promised myself that I would enjoy each day I was granted. I promised myself I would never look back. And I tried, Nicky, oh, how I tried. And that is all the legacy I can leave you, my son. The wish that you learn to live every day fully, and the need never, never to look back. Are you listening to me, Nicky? Do you understand what I am saying?”
“Yes. But I’m still afraid.”
“You have made a friend…no, do not protest. I know you have.”
“No, Aunt Marie. It was all a mistake. It wasn’t me…it was…”
“Hush…I won’t hear it. Whatever happened is in the past. It is dead and what is dead is best forgotten. It is a lesson I have learned well. The future is all that matters.”
Nicky was being given the only thing he had ever wanted, his freedom, but to gain it he had to lose the man who had raised him as would a father and the woman who loved him like a son. And Tom, his only friend, was the most important reason for wanting to be free and he had lost him, too. “Let me come with you, Aunt Marie,” he pleaded, trying to mask the fear in his voice.
She sat erect, her head held high and her manner as imperious as a queen’s. “You will stay, Nicky, and you will succeed. And, my son, one day you will forgive me.”
“Forgive you? For what? For giving me my life? It’s I who need to be forgiven for not graciously accepting the gift.”
Marie Romaine smiled. “But you have already accepted it in your heart and that is where all things begin. Now come, you must say goodbye to Alexis and then we will make our plans.”
Arm in arm they walked down the dark passage, an old lady and a young man.
“I feel so old, Nicky.”
“You are as young and as pretty as the princess in the fairy tales you used to read to me.”
“And you, my Nicky, are a prince.” The young man did not see the mischievous smile on the old woman’s face.
§ § § §
London — 1955
Mrs. Eric Lindenhurst looked every inch the ambassador’s wife and did not have to work at fulfilling the role. She was matronly, in the nicest sense of the word, kind, patient and pretty with nothing more than a trace of powder on her usually smiling face. Her speech and manner reflected her upbringing which was old guard, Boston.
She was happy with her daughter’s choice of husband but chagrined at not being given enough time to plan a more elaborate wedding.
“My debut was elaborate enough to last a lifetime and I think a fancy show in London right now would be in very bad taste,” Erica announced.
Her father agreed and was proud of his daughter’s sensitivity to the times. “And,” Erica told her parents, “we want to go on a long honeymoon. Because of the war Tony and I never saw Europe and we want to explore every inch of it.”
“Do whatever you wish,” her mother answered, “but don’t play too long. Your father and I want grandchildren.”
Before the wedding Erica told Tony Hall everything without naming Alexis Romaine. “If you tell me who he is, Erica, I will gladly kill him.”
“Just be honest with me, Tony. If you don’t want to marry me say so and I’ll go away by myself until this is over. I don’t want you to marry me out of pity. I can live with what’s growing inside me but I couldn’t live with that.”
“I’m marrying you because I love you and I hope you feel the same way about me.”
“I do love you, Tony, very much. And I’ll make it up to you, I swear I will. Can you ever forgive me what I’ve done?”
“We don’t forgive people we love, we accept them as they are. And it’s not for me to forgive; my glass house couldn’t stand the retaliation.”
The newlyweds did not disappear completely. They saw friends on the continent and even visited London on several occasions.
When her condition became obvious Erica even tried to feel the joy her parents expressed over the coming event. The couple had decided to be abroad in February, the month the child was expected, and when it came and had been delivered to its rightful father they would announce that it had been born dead and their nightmare would be over. It was a deceitful but painfully simple plan.
“I want to keep it,” Tony said as her time grew near. “I feel it’s mine and it could easily be ours.”
Erica thought of Alexis Romaine and shook her head. “That’s not possible, my love, but we’re young and have plenty of time ahead of us to have a family of our own.”
Paradoxically, it was Tony Hall who was sterile and he and Erica were never able to have a family of their own.