Enoch's Folly

  Five minutes after Nando had left home, the telephone rang.

  “Good afternoon, is Fernando there?”

  “He left around half an hour ago. Would you like to leave a message?” Rida decided not to ask who was calling and see what would come of it.

  “No thank you. Have a good evening.” Click.

  It was the first time Victoria had called when Nando wasn’t home. She was usually so efficient. Rida wondered if lying about his departure time would cause the girl unwarranted worry, but decided giving her son some leeway if he blamed traffic for his lateness was worth the risk.

  The familiarity of the subway reassured Nando, as did the commonality of the people with whom he shared a bus. Time whittled down their numbers until he reached the stop closest to Victoria’s house and was the last off. From there, he walked. A taxi from the end of the rail line would have been faster, but he was in a rebellious mood. In his hand was a small box, tightly wrapped in smooth brown paper. In his jacket’s inside pocket was a card. He wasn’t satisfied with what he’d written in it, and thought about throwing it into a storm drain as he walked past one. There’d be nothing, but would that be worse?

  The gentle hills made home by the large estates were lush and green but perfectly sculpted and constrained, no doubt by highly skilled and lowly paid men who dreamed their grandchildren would live in such palaces. As Nando walked up the road toward the beginning of Victoria’s long driveway, he began to hear music. The faintest rain started to fall, so faint Nando barely felt it. The lights of Victoria’s home glimmered in it, and his fear grew.

  The usual guard, Ruskin, was not on and the temp expressionlessly checked Nando’s name against the list. The walk from there was long, and Nando had plenty of time to contemplate the tuxedos and cocktail dresses milling around the grand front entrance. His Sunday best wasn’t good enough, but he’d known that before he put it on. He had, at least, polished his shoes and combed his hair more carefully than usual. He listened to the swing. Too early for swing, he thought, and wondered just how late he was without looking at his watch. He listened to the crunching loose stones underfoot.

  Nando walked through the doors, he thought, as though it was the most natural and expected thing imaginable, but failing to make eye contact with any one simply drew unwanted attention. He tried not to think about it, which made it worse. He knew the more he worried about not worrying, the more affected he would seem. Anxious to show how little he cared about the impression he made, Nando was bound to appear anxious to make a good impression. Anxiety about this miscommunication made him more anxious still, creating an absurd circle of neurosis. He thought of his mother, Rida, half spic, half Indian, and all outcast. She came from nothing, and never gave a damn about anything other than making the most of life and being a good parent.

  He remembered her reaction when an elementary school teacher asked what Fernando was in English.

  “Fernando.”

  “Yes, but in English?”

  “I’m speaking English, and his name is Fernando.”

  The teacher had looked at her blankly for a moment.

  “I understand, but what does Fernando mean in English?”

  Rida has smiled. “I’m not sure you do understand. My son’s name is Fernando. If this is difficult for you, he also answers to Mr Hammett.”

  Nando saw Victoria standing upstairs, on a mezzanine. She was holding a tea cup and watching an enormous chandelier sway gently. She looked down at him within a second, as though she knew he was looking up. She smiled. He’d been worried about her mood, and her smile was like a second giant chandelier being switched on. She wore light blue. He barely noticed the details of the dress, but later would remember everything about it, and every word she said. He plucked a glass of juice from a waiter’s tray and hurried up the stairs, not caring about looking uncool. His glass clinked into her tea cup which, to his surprise, was full of tea.

  They were the same height, as always. Tonight she wore flats, as always. It was something he liked about her. One more thing on a long list. Some of the things he liked about her weren’t on the list, because Nando couldn’t put them into words, but he knew them anyway, the way we know and feel things that don’t have names. (Like the feeling we get when we see restaurant owners standing at the front of their empty business, hands on hips, looking up and down the street for a saviour. It’s not pity or sadness, but something else. Or the feeling we get as children putting away a toy for the last time, because we are too old for it, even though we still love it. It’s not regret, or nostalgia, but something else still without an adequate name.)

  “No gloves?” he said.

  Victoria hated gloves. She said they meant someone was afraid of touching the real world.

  “You look… you look beautiful.”

  “You too.”

  “How’s the tea?”

  “You’re late, but that’s ok. You arrived just in time. I think I was about to snap.”

  “Is it the swing?”

  “I like swing.”

  He thought about Victoria’s unaffected honesty, her ready acceptance of the compliment without the theatre of false modesty endemic in… normal people. He thought about the fact their conversation was barely begun, and hardly profound, but it was the only conversation in the room, and she was the only person at the party. He forgot the worries about not looking worried, forgot all the crap and the politics, forgot the fact he’d made a point of eating a bigger dinner than usual so he wasn’t tempted to gorge on the hors d’oeuvres.

  “I’d like to meet your folks,” he said.

  “Sure, let’s go.” She led him by the hand.

  Victoria’s mother looked barely thirty-five, and nothing like her daughter. Mrs Holinshed was fairy tale pretty, but her smile – worn almost constantly for the party – told a different story. It only looked genuine when it was the face of schadenfreude.

  Mr Holinshed had a good tailor but a bad temperament. He wore his dinner suit like a bouncer, but with his presidential haircut and fifty dollar watch no one could mistake him for security. His eyes were grey, like Victoria’s, and his face carried none of the weather lines common on common people. He’d worked to turn an inherited small fortune and into a vast one, but had spent his life free of existential doubts over his next meal, or the roof over his head. His cropped dark blonde hair was grey at the temples, and he had Victoria’s chin dimple.

  “Mother, father – this is Fernando Hammett.”

  Mrs Holinshed offered her hand like a princess, and Nando wasn’t sure what to do with it. He found Mr Holinshed’s bone-crushing grip reassuring by comparison.

  “I like your suit.” Mr Holinshed said, and meant it, raising his martini.

  “Thanks Sir. I like yours. It’s by Henry Stewart isn’t it?”

  Victoria’s parents looked at one another.

  “Well, it is at that. You know your stuff Fernando.”

  They wanted to know how he knew, but were too polite to ask. Nando kept quiet. He wasn’t in the mood to do them any favours.

  “Fernando’s a great student of our great city,” Victoria said.

  “You’re also a student at Trinity?” Mrs Holinshed smiled.

  “I am.”

  “Lilyann had her doubts about these co-ed schools, but I didn’t want Victoria to stay in a girls’ school too long and turn out... and turn out…” Mr Holinshed stopped.

  Mrs Holinshed turned at him and smiled coldly. “Turn out like what honey? Or should I say who?”

  Victoria interceded. “There’s a lot to be said for mixed schools mother.” She sipped her tea. “If we are going to be pushing our way into the boardrooms and the Congress, these boys need to get used to having us beat them in tests.”

  Mr Holinshed laughed. “In thirty years Victoria will be President. And thirty days after that we will be at war.”

  “I’m sure it will be a just war.” Victoria refused to take the bait.

  ??
?A just war must be motivated by Christian love.” Mrs Holinshed said pointedly. Victoria glared at her.

  “Augustine of Hippo.” Fernando said, almost involuntarily.

  “Well,” Mrs Holinshed smiled again. “I’m glad they’re teaching you kids something of worth.”

  Mr Holinshed turned on Nando.

  “So what’s the plan after school Fernando. College?”

  “I’d like to focus on the family business.”

  Holinshed raised his eyebrows.

  “What business is that?”

  “Phonographs, radios and records. Retail – from our own place in the city. It has been running for a while but things have particularly picked up lately. I work there after school most days, and all day Saturday.”

  “It’s a growing trade,” the older man said with the enthusiasm he reserved for the subject of making money. “Fifteen years ago it was a niche market, now everyone’s buying records. Victoria owns more than she’s listened to.”

  Mrs Holinshed was already bored. “But no college?”

  “If I can. I… read a lot at home.”

  Victoria’s husband smiled at his daughter. “Self-educated, like my father. Nothing wrong with that at all.” His wife disagreed, but let her silence do the talking.

  Victoria wanted to wrap things up. She could see both of them studying Nando’s face and found it irritating.

  “Enjoying your party?” she asked her parents sweetly.

  “Honey,” her mother began. “Not this again.”

  Mr Holinshed put his hand on Nando’s shoulder and turned him away from the two Holinshed women. He leaned forward and spoke quietly.

  “Let me know if you want to get a real drink later on.”

  “Thank you Sir, that’s kind of you.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  Mr Holinshed turned to his daughter and slapped Nando on the back.

  “Go and have fun, for goodness’ sake. It’s a party.”

  Victoria didn’t need to be asked twice. She took Nando’s hand and led him outside, where a wooden dance floor was set up under a white marquee strong with coloured light globes. The band played to a smallish crowd, some teenagers but mostly men and women in their 30s and 40s… friends of the family. Back on the mezzanine, Mr and Mrs Holinshed watched them leave the hall.

  “What kind of name is Fernando?”

  “Portuguese or Spanish. Does it matter?”

  “I would say it does.” Mrs Holinshed frowned. “It sounds like a gardener’s name.”

  “And you sound like your father. He was a bigot through and through.”

  “He was a patriot.”

  “He was a brute who got lucky. Nothing more. That kid is going to make something of himself. He’s not for Victoria, but he will make something of himself.”

  “Well,” Lilyann sighed. “At least we agree on one thing.”

  Outside Victoria held Nando closer than was considered decent in that environment.

  “They’re not so bad,” he said.

  “My father likes to think of himself as having the common touch; that he speaks the same language as ‘regular folk’. It’s when he sees someone as an equal that he can be truly vile.”

  “And your mother?”

  “You think she’s my mother?”

  Nando paused. “Yes. I do.”

  Victoria smiled. “You’re right. Well. Lilyann. You’ve seen the framed picture of her in the hall.”

  “The one of her in a sash and tiara?”

  “It’s from 1922, but in her mind she never took that crown off. That’s my mother.”

  “It’s funny. My mother lives perpetually in the future. She always talks about the future of the store, about my sister getting another scholarship and going to med school, about putting things away for a rainy day, about planning. It’s like she has thrown out her memories… while other people tend to live in the past.”

  Victoria looked into his eyes. “Everyone wants to live in their golden days. Some people’s are behind them, some people’s are yet to come.”

  “What about your golden days?”

  “I think they’ve just started.” She looked around. “If we get it right…”

  She smiled at him – a real smile.

  “I’m not going to spend my life reacting to other people’s plans, other people’s choices and mistakes. I’m going to make the running myself – it’s the only way.”

  He listened. Nando’s mind had been fixated on the idea Victoria lived in a different world, one in which he could not intrude for long. On the dance floor, her hand in his, his hand on her hip, he abandoned that notion; of all anxiety and neuroses. As long as the music played, as long as they kept moving, they would be okay.

  “Let’s get out of here.” She said.

  “Are you serious? What about your parents?”

  “It’ll take an hour before they notice.”

  “Where should we go?”

  She grabbed his hand.

  “Does it matter?”

  They slipped out of the marquee and through the gardens, past guests absorbed in their conversations, past waiters counting down the minutes to the end of their shifts, past perfect hedges and Greek statues, past an abandoned game of croquet and over an expanse of grass, down to an iron bar in the estate fence Victoria had loosened years earlier. She unscrewed and pulled the bottom bolt out and swung the bar to one side, leaving just enough room for them to ease through one at a time. She crouched, screwed the bottom bolt back in place and looked up at Nando with a grin.

  “This stretch of the wall,” she motioned to the iron fencing between two brick pillars one hundred yards apart. “They didn’t weld the bars after they bolted them in. Every other section is bolted and welded. Let’s go.” She walked briskly away, breaking into a skip. She turned and smiled again, this time walking backwards for a few paces. “We’ll walk until we see a cab.” She turned back again and he hurried to keep up.

  It occurred to him. Victoria, in her childhood, had examined the entire fence, looking for a way out. Now she was out – and Nando knew wherever it was she decided to go, he wanted to be there.

  *

  Rida Hammett had not mentioned Comely to her son yet. Nando, usually so observant, had been distracted by “some friend”, and Rida wasn’t quite sure what it was exactly she had to tell him. Comely was an unusual fish; he didn’t seem to take anything seriously, but there were moments in which a grimness flashed across his face – barely perceptible. Rida had seen it when they walked into a place he didn’t know, and once when she asked him where he was from – before he gave a reasonable but evasive answer. “I’m from a small town in Jersey. It basically doesn’t exist anymore. The plant shut down and everyone moved.” And he’d said nothing more. He didn’t sound like he was from Jersey. He didn’t sound like he was from anywhere in particular. Rida thought of his accent as “mid-Atlantic”, but even that seemed too specific.

  She thought of the day they’d met at Tony Horne’s bookstore. She’d never met someone like that and had a coffee with them. Not once. But with him, it seemed like the logical thing to do. The short conversation in Tony’s store was too short, it had to continue, and it kept having to continue. Comely dropped into her store often, but usually not for long. He’d drop by, suggest a date elsewhere later that day or the next, then zip. If she wasn’t in, he’d leave a note. She wondered why he never stayed for long at the store. Maybe he was a consummate professional, and didn’t want to disturb her at work… But then why not telephone instead of showing up? What she didn’t know is that Comely would often disconnect his telephone to stop himself from calling her… And many of the times he’d visited her store, he had had no intention of doing so but, while ostensibly going elsewhere, found himself at her doorstep.

  They’d gone on perhaps a dozen dates. She found the word strange. She was only just over 40 years old, but ‘dating’ was something for teenagers and college kids. She wondered how old
Comely was. He looked her age, she thought, most of the time, but there were moments in which his eyes looked old. Moments in which the fine lines on his face seemed to grow heavy and dark. On the other hand, if there were children around Comely would become an imp - playing pranks and moving like … like… She couldn’t think of the word. When she saw him interact with kids she thought he’d make a good grandfather someday… but couldn’t imagine him as an old man. She hadn’t asked him if he had children. She’d noticed he didn’t wear a wedding band on the day they’d met. She wondered if there’d been someone, a wife, even a family. She wondered if that was what he was thinking of when his eyes seemed so old. He’d lost something – but she knew he’d tell her if he ever wanted to talk about it. She wasn’t one for digging into people’s wounds to for the cheap hit of satisfying her curiosity.

  She hadn’t seen him or gotten a note for three days and she felt sick. She realised she was in love with him; this strange fish, this ageless spiv who raised so many questions and delivered so few answers. It wasn’t just the sickness of heart at his absence, it was the fact she believed everything he said – no matter how implausible or incomplete. It was a terribly dangerous thing, she thought, but there was nothing for it now. She had didn’t know exactly how he felt, but they had to ride it out, one way or another.

 

  * * *

  Walter Rubin sat in Nathra’s restaurant in Winsted and smiled out the window at the meandering human traffic, too early for the suits - it was cleaners, couriers and paper boys mostly. Aldous Comely sat in Nathra’s restaurant and considered his next move. Walter Rubin was a businessman, imports and exports his card would tell anyone who cared to read it – a respectable man with good references meticulously manufactured and impervious to all but the most trained eye. Aldous Comely, if he was a man at all, could not in good conscience claim the title respectable, though he did command respect from some. Laura watched him. It was a Saturday and she was not at school, so she helped in the diner. Comely saw her and beckoned her over to his booth.