The Loved One Page 5

  Mr. Joyboy was not a handsome man by the standards of motion-picture studios. He was tall but unathletic. There was lack of shape in his head and body, a lack of color; he had scant eyebrows and invisible eyelashes; the eyes behind his pince-nez were pinkish-gray; his hair, though neat and scented, was sparse; his hands were fleshy; his best feature was perhaps his teeth and they though white and regular seemed rather too large for him; he was a trifle flat-footed and more than a trifle paunchy. But these physical defects were nugatory when set against his moral earnestness and the compelling charm of his softly resonant voice. It was as though there were an amplifier concealed somewhere within him and his speech came from some distant and august studio; everything he said might have been for a peak-hour listening period.

  Dr. Kenworthy always bought the best and Mr. Joyboy came to Whispering Glades with a great reputation. He had taken his baccalaureate in embalming in the Middle West and for some years before his appointment to Whispering Glades had been one of the Undertaking Faculty at an historic Eastern University. He had served as Chief Social Executive at two National Morticians’ Conventions. He had led a goodwill mission to the morticians of Latin America. His photograph, albeit with a somewhat ribald caption, had appeared in Time magazine.

  Before he came there had been murmurs in the embalming-room that Mr. Joyboy was a mere theorist. These were dispelled on the first morning. He had only to be seen with a corpse to be respected. It was like the appearance of a stranger in the hunting-field who from the moment he is seen in the saddle, before hounds move off, proclaims himself unmistakably a horseman. Mr. Joyboy was unmarried and every girl in Whispering Glades gloated on him.

  Aimée knew that her voice assumed a peculiar tone when she spoke to him. “Was he a very difficult case, Mr. Joyboy?”

  “Well, a wee bit but I think everything has turned out satisfactorily.”

  He drew the sheet back and revealed the body of Sir Francis lying naked save for a new pair of white linen drawers. It was white and slightly translucent, like weathered marble.

  “Oh, Mr. Joyboy, he’s beautiful.”

  “Yes, I fancy he has come up nicely”; he gave a little poulterer’s pinch to the thigh. “Supple,” he raised an arm and gently bent the wrist. “I think we have two or three hours before he need take the pose. The head will have to incline slightly to put the carotid suture in the shadow. The skull drained very nicely.”

  “But, Mr. Joyboy, you’ve given him the Radiant Childhood Smile.”

  “Yes, don’t you like it?”

  “Oh, I like it, of course, but his Waiting One did not ask for it.”

  “Miss Thanatogenos, for you the Loved Ones just naturally smile.”

  “Oh, Mr. Joyboy.”

  “It’s true, Miss Thanatogenos. It seems I am just powerless to prevent it. When I am working for you there’s something inside me says ‘He’s on his way to Miss Thanatogenos’ and my fingers just seem to take control. Haven’t you noticed it?”

  “Well, Mr. Joyboy, I did remark it only last week. ‘All the Loved Ones that come from Mr. Joyboy lately,’ I said, ‘have the most beautiful smiles.’ ”

  “All for you, Miss Thanatogenos.”

  No music was relayed here. The busy floor echoed with the swirling and gurgling of taps in the embalming-rooms, the hum of electric dryers in the cosmetic rooms. Aimée worked like a nun, intently, serenely, methodically; first the shampoo, then the shave, then the manicure. She parted the white hair, lathered the rubbery cheeks and plied the razor; she clipped the nails and probed the cuticle. Then she drew up the wheeled table on which stood her paints and brushes and creams and concentrated breathlessly on the crucial phase of her art.

  Within two hours the main task was complete. Head, neck and hands were now in full color; somewhat harsh in tone, somewhat gross in patina, it seemed, in the penetrating light of the cosmetic room, but the œuvre was designed for the amber glow of the Slumber Room and the stained light of the chancel. She completed the blue stipple work round the eyelids and stood back complacently. On soft feet Mr. Joyboy had come to her side and was looking down at her work.

  “Lovely, Miss Thanatogenos,” he said. “I can always trust you to carry out my intention. Did you have difficulty with the right eyelid?”

  “Just a little.”

  “A tendency to open in the inside corner?”

  “Yes, but I worked a little cream under the lid and then firmed it with No. 6.”

  “Excellent. I never have to tell you anything. We work in unison. When I send a Loved One in to you, Miss Thanatogenos, I feel as though I were speaking to you through him. Do you ever feel that at all yourself?”

  “I know I’m always special proud and careful when it is one of yours, Mr. Joyboy.”

  “I believe you are, Miss Thanatogenos. Bless you.”

  Mr. Joyboy sighed. A porter’s voice said: “Two more Loved Ones just coming up, Mr. Joyboy. Who are they for?” Mr. Joyboy sighed again and went about his business.

  “Mr. Vogel; are you free for the next?”

  “Yes, Mr. Joyboy.”

  “One of them is an infant,” said the porter. “Will you be taking her yourself?”

  “Yes, as always. Is it a mother and child?”

  The porter looked at the labels on the wrists. “No, Mr. Joyboy, no relation.”

  “Very well, Mr. Vogel, will you take the adult? Had they been mother and child I should have taken both, busy though I am. There is a something in individual technique—not everyone would notice it perhaps; but if I saw a pair that had been embalmed by different hands I should know at once and I should feel that the child did not properly belong to its mother; as though they had been estranged in death. Perhaps I seem whimsical?”

  “You do love children, don’t you, Mr. Joyboy?”

  “Yes, Miss Thanatogenos. I try not to discriminate, but I am only human. There is something in the innocent appeal of a child that brings out a little more than the best in me. It’s as if I was inspired, sometimes, from outside; something higher… but I mustn’t start on my pet subject now. To work—”

  Presently the outfitters came and dressed Sir Francis Hinsley in his shroud, deftly fitting it. Then they lifted him—he was getting rigid—and placed him in the casket.

  Aimée went to the curtain which separated the embalming-rooms from the cosmetic rooms and attracted the notice of an orderly.

  “Will you tell Mr. Joyboy that my Loved One is ready for posing? I think he should come now. He is firming.”

  Mr. Joyboy turned off a tap and came to Sir Francis Hinsley. He raised the arms and set the hands together, not in a form of prayer, but folded one on the other in resignation. He raised the head, adjusted the pillow and twisted the neck so that a three-quarter face was exposed to view. He stood back, studied his work and then leaned forward again to give the chin a little tilt.

  “Perfect,” he said. “There are a few places where he’s got a little rubbed putting him in the casket. Just go over them once with the brush quite lightly.”

  “Yes, Mr. Joyboy.”

  Mr. Joyboy lingered a moment, then turned away.

  “Back to baby,” he said.

  Five

  The funeral was fixed for Thursday; Wednesday afternoon was the time for leave-taking in the Slumber Room. That morning Dennis called at Whispering Glades to see that everything was in order.

  He was shown straight to the Orchid Room. Flowers had arrived in great quantities, mostly from the shop below, mostly in their “natural beauty.” (After consultation the Cricket Club’s fine trophy in the shape of crossed bats and wickets had been admitted. Dr. Kenworthy had himself given judgment; the trophy was essentially a reminder of life, not of death; that was the crux.) The ante-room was so full of flowers that there seemed no other furniture or decoration; double doors led to the Slumber Room proper.

  Dennis hesitated with his fingers on the handle and was aware of communication with another hand beyond the panels. Thus in a hundre
d novels had lovers stood. The door opened and Aimée Thanatogenos stood quite close to him; behind her more, many more flowers and all about her a rich hot-house scent and the low voices of a choir discoursing sacred music from the cornice. At the moment of their meeting a treble voice broke out with poignant sweetness: “O for the Wings of a Dove.”

  No breath stirred the enchanted stillness of the two rooms. The leaded casements were screwed tight. The air came, like the boy’s voice, from far away, sterilized and transmuted. The temperature was slightly cooler than is usual in American dwellings. The rooms seemed isolated and unnaturally quiet, like a railway coach that has stopped in the night far from any station.

  “Come in, Mr. Barlow.”

  Aimée stood aside and now Dennis saw that the center of the room was filled with a great cumulus of flowers. Dennis was too young ever to have seen an Edwardian conservatory in full fig but he knew the literature of the period and in his imagination had seen such a picture; it was all there, even the gilt chairs disposed in pairs as though for some starched and jeweled courtship.

  There was no catafalque. The coffin stood a few inches from the carpet on a base that was hidden in floral enrichments. Half the lid was open. Sir Francis was visible from the waist up. Dennis thought of the wax-work of Marat in his bath.

  The shroud had been made to fit admirably. There was a fresh gardenia in the buttonhole and another between the fingers. The hair was snow-white and parted in a straight line from brow to crown revealing the scalp below, colorless and smooth as though the skin had rolled away and the enduring skull already lay exposed. The gold rim of the monocle framed a delicately tinted eyelid.

  The complete stillness was more startling than any violent action. The body looked altogether smaller than life-size now that it was, as it were, stripped of the thick pelt of mobility and intelligence. And the face which inclined its blind eyes towards him—the face was entirely horrible; as ageless as a tortoise and as inhuman; a painted and smirking obscene travesty by comparison with which the devil-mask Dennis had found in the noose was a festive adornment, a thing an uncle might don at a Christmas party.

  Aimée stood beside her handiwork—the painter at the private view—and heard Dennis draw his breath in sudden emotion.

  “Is it what you hoped?” she asked.

  “More”—and then—“Is he quite hard?”

  “Firm.”

  “May I touch him?”

  “Please not. It leaves a mark.”

  “Very well.”

  Then in accordance with the etiquette of the place, she left him to his reflections.

  There was brisk coming-and-going in the Orchid Slumber Room later that day; a girl from the Whispering Glades secretariat sat in the ante-room recording the names of the visitors. These were not the most illustrious. The stars, the producers, the heads of departments would come next day for the interment. That afternoon they were represented by underlings. It was like the party held on the eve of a wedding to view the presents, attended only by the intimate, the idle and the unimportant. The Yes-men were there in force. Man proposed. God disposed. These bland, plump gentlemen signaled their final abiding assent to the arrangement, nodding into the blind mask of death.

  Sir Ambrose made a cursory visit.

  “Everything set for tomorrow, Barlow? Don’t forget your ode. I should like it at least an hour before the time so that I can run over it in front of the mirror. How is it going?”

  “I think it will be all right.”

  “I shall recite it at the graveside. In the church there will be merely the reading from the Works and a song by Juanita—‘The Wearing of the Green.’ It’s the only Irish song she’s learned yet. Curious how Flamenco she makes it sound. Have you arranged the seating in the church?”

  “Not yet.”

  “The Cricket Club will be together, of course. Megalopolitan will want the first four rows. Erikson is probably coming himself. Well, I can leave all that to you, can’t I?” As he left the mortuary he said: “I am sorry for young Barlow. He must feel all this terribly. The great thing is to give him plenty to do.”

  Dennis presently drove to the University Church. It was a small, stone building whose square tower rose among immature holm-oaks on the summit of a knoll. The porch was equipped with an apparatus by which at will a lecture might be switched on to explain the peculiarities of the place. Dennis paused to listen.

  The voice was a familiar one, that of the travel-film: “You are standing in the Church of St. Peter-without-the-walls, Oxford, one of England’s oldest and most venerable places of worship. Here generations of students have come from all over the world to dream the dreams of youth. Here scientists and statesmen still unknown dreamed of their future triumphs. Here Shelley planned his great career in poetry. From here young men set out hopefully on the paths of success and happiness. It is a symbol of the soul of the Loved One who starts from here on the greatest success story of all time. The success that waits for all of us whatever the disappointments of our earthly lives.

  “This is more than a replica, it is a reconstruction. A building-again of what those old craftsmen sought to do with their rude implements of bygone ages. Time has worked its mischief on the beautiful original. Here you see it as the first builders dreamed of it long ago.

  “You will observe that the side aisles are constructed solely of glass and grade A steel. There is a beautiful anecdote connected with this beautiful feature. In 1935 Dr. Kenworthy was in Europe seeking in that treasure house of Art something worthy of Whispering Glades. His tour led him to Oxford and the famous Norman church of St. Peter. He found it dark. He found it full of conventional and depressing memorials. ‘Why,’ asked Dr. Kenworthy, ‘do you call it St. Peter-without-the-walls?’ and they told him it was because in the old days the city wall had stood between it and the business center. ‘My church,’ said Dr. Kenworthy, ‘shall have no walls.’ And so you see it today full of God’s sunshine and fresh air, bird-song and flowers…”

  Dennis listened intently to the tones so often parodied yet never rendered more absurd or more hypnotic than the original. His interest was no longer purely technical nor purely satiric. Whispering Glades held him in thrall. In that zone of insecurity in the mind where none but the artist dare trespass, the tribes were mustering. Dennis, the frontier-man, could read the signs.

  The voice ceased and after a pause began again: “You are standing in the Church of St. Peter-without-the-walls…” Dennis switched off the apparatus, re-entered the settled area and set about his prosaic task.

  The secretariat had provided him with typewritten name-cards. It was a simple matter to deal them out on the benches. Under the organ was a private pew, separated from the nave by an iron grille and a gauze curtain. Here, when there was a need of it, the bereaved families sat in purdah, hidden from curious glances. This space Dennis devoted to the local gossip writers.

  In half an hour his work was done and he stepped out into the gardens which were no brighter or more flowery or fuller of bird-song than the Norman church.

  The ode lay heavy on him. Not a word was yet written and the languorous, odorous afternoon did not conduce to work. There was also another voice speaking faintly and persistently, calling him to a more strenuous task than Frank Hinsley’s obsequies. He left his car at the lych-gate and followed a gravel walk, which led downhill. The graves were barely visible, marked only by little bronze plaques, many of them as green as the surrounding turf. Water played everywhere from a buried network of pipes, making a glittering rain-belt waist-high out of which rose a host of bronze and Carrara statuary, allegorical, infantile or erotic. Here a bearded magician sought the future in the obscure depths of what seemed to be a plaster football. There a toddler clutched to its stony bosom a marble Mickey Mouse. A turn in the path disclosed Andromeda, naked and fettered in ribbons, gazing down her polished arm at a marble butterfly which had settled there. And all the while his literary sense was alert, like a hunting hound. There was s
omething in Whispering Glades that was necessary to him, that only he could find.

  At length he found himself on the margin of a lake, full of lilies and water-fowl. A notice said: “Tickets here for the Lake Island of Innisfree” and three couples of young people stood at the foot of a rustic landing-stage. He took a ticket.

  “Just the one?” asked the lady at the guichet.

  The young people were as abstracted as he, each pair lapped in an almost visible miasma of adolescent love. Dennis stood unregarded until at length an electric launch drew out of the opposing shore and came silently to its mooring. They embarked together and after a brief passage the couples slipped away into the gardens. Dennis stood irresolutely on the bank.

  The coxswain said: “Expecting someone to meet you here, bud?”

  “No.”

  “There’ve been no single dames all afternoon. I’d have noticed if there had been. Mostly folk comes in couples. Once in a while a guy has a date here and then more often than not the dame never shows up. Better get the dame before you get the ticket, I guess.”

  “No,” said Dennis. “I have merely come to write a poem. Would this be a good place?”

  “I wouldn’t know, bud. I never wrote a poem. But they’ve certainly got it fixed up poetic. It’s named after a very fancy poem. They got beehives. Once they had bees, too, but folks was always getting stung so now it’s done mechanical and scientific; no sore fannies and plenty of poetry.

  “It certainly is a poetic place to be planted in. Costs round about a thousand bucks. The poeticest place in the whole darn park. I was here when they made it. They figured the Irish would come but it seems the Irish are just naturally poetic and won’t pay that much for plantings. Besides they’ve got a low-down kind of cemetery of their own downtown, being Catholic. It’s mostly the good-style Jews we get here. They appreciate the privacy. It’s the water you see keeps out the animals. Animals are a headache in cemeteries. Dr. Kenworthy made a crack about that one Annual. Most cemeteries, he says, provide a dog’s toilet and a cat’s motel. Pretty smart, huh? Dr. Kenworthy is a regular guy when it comes to the Annual.