Death Shall Overcome Page 14

  Thus when his daughter’s call came through, interrupting his appraisal of possible approaches to Edward Parry, he was momentarily bewildered by her opening remarks.

  “Daddy? We watched your show. It was grand.”

  What in the world was she talking about?

  “What’s that? What was grand?”

  “Your television show, Daddy. At lunch today,” she added impatiently. “Timmy wanted to know why you looked so stern.”

  In the host of diabolic viewers he had envisioned, he had never imagined his ten-year-old grandson. No wonder family authority was breaking down everywhere. Briskly he counterattacked by demanding to know why Timmy was watching television instead of attending the fifth grade.

  “Oh, he saw the rerun at four o’clock. I saw it live. Mr. Schuyler must be a fascinating man.”

  Thatcher agreed that he was. He could think of other descriptions, unsuitable for his daughter’s ears.

  “I’m so looking forward to meeting him,” trilled Laura in the tone Thatcher recognized as preliminary to an unwelcome request. Even so, he could not resist following up this statement.

  “When are you going to meet him?”

  “At the benefit at Lincoln Center. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  In some ways Laura and the young man from Tass had a great deal in common. She too phrased her questions so that there was only one possible answer. After much beating around the bush, it developed that Dr. Benjamin Carlson was going to be busy the day after tomorrow and Laura would thereby be deprived of her husband’s escort that evening. She wanted her father to step into the breach.

  “That’s what you get for marrying a surgeon,” said her father brutally. “If you want to go to this Donnybrook, it’s your business and your problem. I have enough of my own.”

  “Oh, Daddy!” Laura was used to sweeping over pro forma displays of opposition. “It isn’t just that I want to go. I have to go!”

  “What do you mean, you have to go?” he demanded suspiciously.

  “I’m a patroness. Together with Mrs. Parry. I must have forgotten to tell you. And everybody knows I’m your daughter. Can’t you see what people would say if your daughter backed out of supporting Mrs. Parry at a time like this?”

  Thatcher could see all too vividly. Nor did he credit Laura’s forgetfulness for one minute. She had him in a cleft stick, and they both knew it.

  “Can’t you get anybody else?” he asked, fighting to the last ditch.

  “But it can’t be just anybody else. Not on a night like this. And Gloria Parry likes you. She told me so.”

  Dimly a plan took shape in Thatcher’s mind. Much as he disliked the whole idea of benefit concerts at Lincoln Center, he began to see that it might be his duty to attend. In fact, Laura had given him the answer to his problem. And he had never deceived himself with the hope that the solution was going to be attractive.

  But he had his paternal position to maintain. It was with a great show of reluctance that he let Laura force him down the path of compliance, inch by inch.

  It was not until ten minutes later that she was saying: “Oh, thank you, Daddy. I knew I could count on you.”

  Chapter 13

  Or Roll of Stirring Drum

  IN TRUTH, John Putnam Thatcher was happy that his children still counted him among the strong buttresses of life. He did, however, regret that rendering support to his daughter, Laura, so often required formal attire. The check he had mailed that morning to one of his sons was, in many ways, a smaller price to pay.

  “A very, very successful evening.”

  The speaker, a portly middle-aged Black man, was decked out, like Thatcher, in white tie and tails. He was surveying the great lobby of the concert hall, tonight aglitter with the hard brilliance of crystal, the honey gleam of marble, the shimmer of fluid satin and the sparkle of diamonds. His gaze encompassed elegantly gowned women, floating like butterflies through the iridescent beauty of the setting; even among their escorts there was an occasional peacock. Tonight, Thatcher saw, ribbons were being worn; silhouetted against a column was the magnificence of a rich purple turban; just sweeping in through the great glass doors was the crimson splendor of ceremonial African robes. And, to light and sound, there was added the special, unforgettable scent of powder on bared shoulders, the attar of a hundred perfumes, the rich leaf of tobacco, and the smoky pungency of furs touched by the fog’s damp fingers.

  “It is indeed a successful evening,” said John Putnam Thatcher. He had fallen into this stilted conversational exchange after Laura, resplendent in a black taffeta gown that may have explained why her husband was finding it necessary to work hard these days, spied an acquaintance and swept away for a moment. Thatcher’s chance companion, while projecting substance and a certain proprietary satisfaction, had the look of a man similarly cast adrift by a woman. Before he could continue their exchange, he was reclaimed.

  “There you are, Fred! Where have you been?” a pearled matron emerged from the crowd, collected Fred in a practiced fashion and bore him away. As he passed, his eyes met Thatcher’s with an expression age-old to man, regardless of race, creed or color.

  “Women,” it said.

  “There you are, Daddy,” said Laura. “I’ve been wondering where you were.”

  “I haven’t moved an inch,” Thatcher replied mildly.

  Strong-mindedly, Laura ignored this.

  “Isn’t it wonderful that the evening’s so successful,” she said, nodding regally to a passing couple. This moment of graciousness was immortalized by a photographer who exploded a blinding flashbulb at them. Thatcher only wished he could believe that he would appear on the Society Page. But, since Bradford Withers’ gaffe, he very much feared that a vice-president of the Sloan was front page fodder.

  “I’ve been saying the same thing as a matter of courtesy,” he said irascibly, “but with my own offspring, I feel constrained to point out that it’s a little early to decide this is a successful evening, in view of the fact that it has barely begun. And why, may I ask, is it necessary for us to promenade about?”

  Like her mother before her, Laura had a splendid way of dealing with this kind of fractiousness. She smiled brilliantly.

  “Oh, Daddy,” she said in perfunctory protest “Good evening, Mrs. Bertolling . . .”

  As Thatcher escorted his daughter through the crush, exchanging civilities with acquaintances, then fell back to let the ladies discuss civil rights or, occasionally, culture, he had plenty of time to think. Without a doubt, if volume were the criterion, the NAACP gala was a success. Over intervening heads, Thatcher could see that the endless string of limousines was still debouching magnificently attired concert parties at the door. Unfortunately, he also saw four raincoated policemen, guarding the barricades that kept the corridor under the canopy free of idle sightseers—or worse. Out of sight, but not out of mind, beyond further barricades, were the inevitable pickets, undeterred by foggy drizzle or by the police caution which was keeping them far distant from the festivities. Glum and depressing, they stood in the rain beneath placards which were also depressing:

  CIVIL RIGHTS FOR WHITES

  NO MINORITY RULE

  And, inevitably:

  IMPEACH EARL WARREN

  Of course, these poor wretches posed no threat to the assemblage of wealth, prestige, and power, black and white, gathering in the stylish premises of Lincoln Center, to attend a concert, then a late supper, to swell the coffers of NAACP, and to support civil rights in general, and Edward Parry’s rights in particular.

  But were there any other threats? Thatcher looked around. It was hard to believe that anybody in this animated gathering—and he saw a U.S. senator laughing in a hearty professional way—felt any threat imminent. Black or white, the dignitaries were smiling unconcernedly, conversing happily, exuding fellowship, optimism and goodwill. But, Thatcher knew, many things are hard to believe. Some of the men and women floating grandly up the stairway to the balcony had ha
d firsthand experience with the dark forces of hatred and bigotry, and recently. Could anyone, say, Owen Abercrombie, be planning further damage? Something more meaningful than ugly words on placards, carried by life’s rejects?

  John Putnam Thatcher profoundly hoped not. The ladies were excited enough already. Add an “incident” perpetrated before their eyes, and the ailments afflicting Wall Street would include enraged Carrie Nations, marching in and out of brokerage houses, axing ticker machines.

  “Mrs. Parry,” said Laura. “Hello, Gloria.”

  Thatcher roused himself. The first thing to meet his eyes was a vision of calculated and artful magnificence. He spoke the words that came into his mind.

  “You are in great beauty tonight, Mrs. Parry.”

  This old-fashioned formulation delighted Gloria Parry, who briefly gleamed the smile of a warm, vital woman instead of a poised and disciplined public personage. Laura dimpled her approval, rather as if her father were young Timothy, doing something precocious and, for a change, socially acceptable. Yet Thatcher spoke no more than the truth. Mrs. Parry wore a gown of amber lace with emeralds. The effect was impressive.

  Thatcher glanced around to see if Edward Parry’s composure were equal to the trying task of escorting a really dazzling woman. A word with Parry, he reminded himself, could go far toward relieving the Sloan of its current embarrassments, and so render tonight’s discomforts a simple extension of his professional obligations.

  “Ed’s talking to Mr. Kingsley over there,” said Mrs. Parry, reading his thoughts. What she really meant, Thatcher knew, was that she had dispatched her luckless husband to take care of her furs, then blithely sailed away into the crowd, leaving him to search for her.

  “Have you met Mrs. McCullough?” Gloria Parry continued.

  ‘‘I wonder where Vin is?” Mrs. McCullough replied after greetings had been exchanged. She looked around, vaguely expectant.

  This was the only way in which Mrs. McCullough resembled her companions. A tall, slim woman, she wore her hair in the long blond sweep that had, no doubt, made her an exceptionally attractive college girl some 25 years earlier. She was not evincing pleasure in the gaiety of the occasion, like Laura who was becoming more organization-minded with every child. Nor did Mrs. McCullough have the aura of enormous physical attraction coupled with superb and expensive plumage that marked Gloria Parry. She was, it soon developed, another, not uncommon, type of American woman.

  “. . . just about dead on my feet,” she said in a firm voice.

  “Oh, really?” Laura began. But despite her four children, she was too young to have perfected social armament against the Julia McCulloughs of this world.

  “We went to Arthur Foote’s funeral today,” Mrs. McCullough continued commandingly. “So depressing. Of course, Virginia is prostrate, poor dear. But I understand that Art had very good insurance, which is something. . . .”

  Gloria Parry was old enough to be able to deal with this phenomenon. Moreover, her upbringing had brought her to a finer cutting edge socially speaking than would ever be necessary for a Laura Thatcher Carlson. But she, too, was effectively immobilized. Anything concerning a Schuyler & Schuyler partner, even a murdered partner, was necessarily interesting to Edward Parry’s wife. Gloria Parry was not a politician’s daughter for nothing.

  Nevertheless, she indulged herself with an alarmingly intelligent look at Thatcher, before murmuring:

  “What a tragedy . . .”

  “Just awful . . .” Laura echoed dutifully.

  “. . . but of course, there are the children, which makes it hard,” Mrs. McCullough forged on, her voice quarantining her unwilling audience from the general surge of bright social chatter, the graceful semi-waltz movements of the fluid festive crowd and, Thatcher saw with sudden indignation, from the champagne cocktails being made available rather than served at a table beneath an extraordinary ton of metal which was, it was to be presumed, a piece of statuary.

  “I know how it is. My sister’s husband died just last month, and Vin and I had to support Carolyn through the whole thing. And it wasn’t the money . . .”

  “No, indeed,” Gloria Parry said through a glaze of boredom.

  Laura, Thatcher regretted to see, was incapable of even this.

  “. . . because he was a doctor and left Carolyn quite comfortable, thank God! But Vin was executor, and there was all the trouble of settling his effects, and closing up his office, and so suddenly. Then, telling the boys was simply terrible. I said . . .”

  Without compunction, Thatcher withdrew his attention. At a distance he sighted Nat Schuyler. Nat was looking subdued. Was he worried, Thatcher wondered. Or, was it simply the small round woman at his side in black velvet and lace, a plethora of chains and other hangings, and completely improbable black hair?

  Idly, Thatcher’s gaze wandered on. There was Tom Robichaux, with an extremely decorative blond young woman. Was that Celestine, returned from the sinister Greek yacht?

  As Thatcher recalled, and he was the first to admit that he might be in error, the current Mrs. Robichaux was a striking redhead.

  “John! Good to see you!”

  Clearly Charlie Trinkam had not let social niceties keep him from the champagne cocktails. He was enjoying himself thoroughly. In his way, the man was a marvel. Beside him, looking handsome, if severe, in black brocade was Miss Feathers.

  “I’m glad to see that the Sloan is out in full force tonight,” she observed after a round of introductions.

  With a raised eyebrow, Charlie inspected the crowd. “Brad here? I haven’t seen him, have you?”

  “God forbid!” said Thatcher under his breath.

  Fortunately, his words were lost in a lecture from Miss Feathers: “In view of the really appalling situation developing on Wall Street, I can only say that if the large institutions . . .” Her earnest tactlessness, and the real terror of what she might feel impelled to say, galvanized Gloria Parry and Laura into protective measures. As of one accord, they turned to Mrs. McCullough, and cooingly said:

  “And you’re moving too, aren’t you?”

  “Oh, moving is such a chore!”

  Mrs. McCullough, who had looked Miss Feathers up and down and decided that she did not like what she saw, sighed dramatically. The enlargement of her audience did not, however, materially alter her peculiarly confiding tone. “I am just about frantic. We’re selling the house, now that the children are grown up . . .”

  Miss Feathers, as befits a lady intellectual, interjected a comment designed to inflate Mrs. McCullough’s troubles into a sociological generalization.

  “Have you noticed how housing starts are shifting heavily into multiple dwelling units . . .?” Even the normally imperturbable Charlie Trinkam was moderately taken aback; Mrs. McCullough simply raised her voice slightly.

  “... a terrible wrench, leaving Stamford. Not to speak of how terribly rents have risen. You wouldn’t believe what we’re paying for a simple six-room terrace apartment on the East Side. I told Vin he’d have to take care of selling the beach cottage himself. Really, what with talking to real estate people, and trying to get everything into storage and getting rid of the second car—and then having to go to funerals, I am thoroughly exhausted. Not that Carolyn . . .”

  Her detailed recital continued. Mrs. Parry merely endured. Laura allowed herself the luxury of nodding to fortunate passing friends, and Miss Feathers listened as if Mrs. McCullough were an aborigine encountered on a particularly arduous field trip.

  “By God!” said Charlie Trinkam in a low voice. “Look over there, John.”

  Thatcher glanced toward the entrance. Just strolling in was a small party of men, all decorously attired in evening clothes. In their midst, enormously pleased with himself, was Owen Abercrombie.

  “Do you think that means trouble?” Charlie asked in an undertone. “Lee Clark is here, too.”

  “Lee Clark is no threat,” Thatcher said, keeping his voice down. “He’s just trying to protect his Black b
usiness. But I don’t like this. . . .”

  He broke off when he noticed that Gloria Parry was following this exchange, quiet as it was. She too had seen Owen Abercrombie enter. She raised her chin fractionally.

  Good girl, Thatcher applauded mentally.

  She was smiling her beautiful smile as Ed Parry made his way through the crowd to her side.

  “There you are,” his wife said calmly. “I was wondering where you were.”

  “Yes,” said Ed Parry. “Well, I think we should be getting inside. . . .”

  In the ensuing stir, John Thatcher managed to have a few quiet words with Parry concerning a brief talk between the two of them at some point during the evening.

  “I’ll bet it’s about Withers,” said Parry with an appreciative grin.

  “It is,” said Thatcher.

  “We’d better talk about it. We can have coffee together after dinner,” Parry said, still smiling.

  He was as impressive as his wife, Thatcher decided.

  Because Edward Parry, too, had seen Owen Abercrombie, and he knew what that meant He was remaining not only calm, but cooperative.

  “That’ll be a help,” said Charlie Trinkam, as a discreet stirring showed that the assembly was being shepherded into the concert hall.

  “Where on earth is Vin?” Mrs. McCullough asked the world. “Oh, there he is . . . Vin! Vin!” Smiling kindly, she bade them a general farewell and plunged off toward her husband.

  “You’ve got the tickets, Daddy?” Laura asked anxiously, after making punctilious au revoirs to the Parrys, who were moving toward the farther entrance.

  He did.

  Using them, however, took time. Progress down the aisle was slow, interrupted by greetings, brief conversations and general confusion. Only when they had finally located their seats next to the head of the State Liquor Authority did Laura whisper a confidence.

  “Wasn’t she a perfectly dreadful woman?”

  “Mm,” said Thatcher, noncommittally, idly flicking through the fat program. He had met worse but he did not say so, knowing this would only elicit a lecture from Laura. She turned to reply to friends’ yoohooing across two rows and her father, to ensure himself against meeting any eyes, continued leafing through a compendium of advertising and good wishes from every major commercial institution in New York City.