‘It’s Mr Joe sir.’
‘The hell it is.’
‘Well maybe he’s all right,’ said Aunt Emily hastily.
‘A bit whipsey, ma’am.’
‘Sarah why the dickens did you let him in?’
‘I didnt let him, he juss came.’
Uncle Jeff pushed his plate away and slapped down his napkin. ‘Oh hell… I’ll go talk to him.’
‘Try and make him go…’ Aunt Emily had begun; she stopped with her mouth partly open. A head was stuck through the curtains that hung in the wide doorway to the livingroom. It had a birdlike face, with a thin drooping nose, topped by a mass of straight black hair like an Indian’s. One of the redrimmed eyes winked quietly.
‘Hullo everybody!… How’s every lil thing? Mind if I butt in?’ His voice perked hoarsely as a tall skinny body followed the head through the curtains. Aunt Emily’s mouth arranged itself in a frosty smile. ‘Why Emily you must… er… excuse me; I felt an evening… er… round the family hearth… er… would be… er… er… beneficial. You understand, the refining influence of the home.’ He stood jiggling his head behind Uncle Jeff’s chair. ‘Well Jefferson ole boy, how’s the market?’ He brought a hand down on Uncle Jeff’s shoulder.
‘Oh all right. Want to sit down?’ he growled.
‘They tell me… if you’ll take a tip from an old timer… er… a retired broker… broker and broker every day… ha-ha… But they tell me that Interborough Rapid Transit’s worth trying a snifter of… Doan look at me crosseyed like that Emily. I’m going right away… Why howdedo Mr Wilkinson… Kids are looking well. Well I’ll be if that isn’t Lily Herf’s lil boy… Jimmy you dont remember your… er… cousin, Joe Harland do you? Nobody remembers Joe Harland… Except you Emily and you wish you could forget him… ha-ha… How’s your mother Jimmy?’
‘A little better thank you,’ Jimmy forced the words out through a tight throat.
‘Well when you go home you give her my love… she’ll understand. Lily and I have always been good friends even if I am the family skeleton… They dont like me, they wish I’d go away… I’ll tell you what boy, Lily’s the best of the lot. Isn’t she Emily, isn’t she the best of the lot of us?’
Aunt Emily cleared her throat. ‘Sure she is, the best looking, the cleverest, the realest… Jimmy your mother’s an emperess… Aways been too fine for all this. By gorry I’d like to drink her health.’
‘Joe you might moderate your voice a little;’ Aunt Emily clicked out the words like a typewriter.
‘Aw you all think I’m drunk… Remember this Jimmy’… he leaned across the table, stroked Jimmy’s face with his grainy whisky breath… ‘these things aren’t always a man’s fault… circumstances… er… circumstances.’ He upset a glass staggering to his feet. ‘If Emily insists on looking at me crosseyed I’m goin out… But remember give Lily Herf Joe Harland’s love even if he has gone to the demnition bowbows.’ He lurched out through the curtains again.
‘Jeff I know he’ll upset the Sèvres vase… See that he gets out all right and get him a cab.’ James and Maisie burst into shrill giggles from behind their napkins. Uncle Jeff was purple.
‘I’ll be damned to hell if I put him in a cab. He’s not my cousin… He ought to be locked up. And next time you see him you can tell him this from me, Emily: if he ever comes here in that disgusting condition again I’ll throw him out.’
‘Jefferson dear, it’s no use getting angry… There’s no harm done. He’s gone.’
‘No harm done! Think of our children. Suppose there’d been a stranger here instead of Wilkinson. What would he have thought of our home?’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ croaked Mr Wilkinson, ‘accidents will happen in the best regulated families.’
‘Poor Joe’s such a sweet boy when he’s himself,’ said Aunt Emily. ‘And think that it looked for a while years ago as if Harland held the whole Curb Market in the palm of his hand. The papers called him the King of the Curb, dont you remember?’ ‘That was before the Lottie Smithers affair…’
‘Well suppose you children go and play in the other room while we have our coffee,’ chirped Aunt Emily. ‘Yes, they ought to have gone long ago.’
‘Can you play Five Hundred, Jimmy?’ asked Maisie.
‘No I cant.’
‘What do you think of that James, he cant play jacks and he cant play Five Hundred.’
‘Well they’re both girl’s games,’ said James loftily. ‘I wouldn’t play em either xept on account of you.’
‘Oh wouldn’t you, Mr Smarty.’
‘Let’s play animal grabs.’
‘But there aren’t enough of us for that. It’s no fun without a crowd.’
‘An last time you got the giggles so bad mother made us stop.’
‘Mother made us stop because you kicked little Billy Schmutz in the funnybone an made him cry.’
‘Spose we go down an look at the trains,’ put in Jimmy.
‘We’re not allowed to go down stairs after dark,’ said Maisie severely.
‘I’ll tell you what lets play stock exchange… I’ve got a million dollars in bonds to sell and Maisie can be the bulls an Jimmy can be the bears.’
‘All right, what do we do?’
‘Oh juss run round an yell mostly… I’m selling short.’
‘All right Mr Broker I’ll buy em all at five cents each.’
‘No you cant say that… You say ninetysix and a half or something like that.’
‘I’ll give you five million for them,’ cried Maisie waving the blotter of the writing desk.
‘But you fool, they’re only worth one million,’ shouted Jimmy.
Maisie stood still in her tracks. ‘Jimmy what did you say then?’ Jimmy felt shame flame up through him; he looked at his stubby shoes. ‘I said, you fool.’
‘Haven’t you ever been to Sunday School? Don’t you know that God says in the Bible that if you call anybody Thou fool you’ll be in danger of hellfire?’
Jimmy didn’t dare raise his eyes.
‘Well I’m not going to play any more,’ said Maisie drawing herself up. Jimmy somehow found himself out in the hall. He grabbed his hat and ran out the door and down the six flights of white stone stairs past the brass buttons and chocolate livery of the elevator boy, out through the hall that had pink marble pillars in to Seventysecond Street. It was dark and blowy, full of ponderous advancing shadows and chasing footsteps. At last he was climbing the familiar crimson stairs of the hotel. He hurried past his mother’s door. They’d ask him why he had come home so soon. He burst into his own room, shot the bolt, doublelocked the door and stood leaning against it panting.
‘Well are you married yet?’ was the first thing Congo asked when Emile opened the door to him. Emile was in his undershirt. The shoebox-shaped room was stuffy, lit and heated by a gas crown with a tin cap on it.
‘Where are you in from this time?’
‘Bizerta and Trondjeb… I’m an able seaman.’
‘That’s a rotten job, going to sea… I’ve saved two hundred dollars. I’m working at Delmonico’s.’
They sat down side by side on the unmade bed. Congo produced a package of gold tipped Egyptian Deities. ‘Four months’ pay’; he slapped his thigh. ‘Seen May Sweitzer?’ Emile shook his head. ‘I’ll have to find the little son of a gun… In those goddam Scandinavian ports they come out in boats, big fat blond women in bumboats…’
They were silent. The gas hummed. Congo let his breath out in a whistle. ‘Whee… C’est chic ça, Delmonico… Why haven’t you married her?’