Seven years ago he had married Margaret Cullen, one of those humdrum, colorless individuals who look as if they might be from anywhere except New York and turn out, incredibly, to be native New Yorkers. She was fifty, eight years older than Claude, with a plain, open countenance and an air of desperate inferiority. Claude had met her through another professor who knew Margaret’s father, and had married her because of certain unconscious drives in himself towards the maternal. But under Margaret’s matronly exterior lay a nature that was half childish, too, and peculiarly irritating to Claude. Apart from her cooking and sewing—she did neither well—and the uninspired routine that might be called the running of the house, she had no interests. Except for an occasional exchange of letters, which she bored Claude by reading aloud at the table, she had detached herself from her old friends.
Claude came home about five most afternoons, had some tea and planned his work and reading for the evening. At 6:15, he drank a martini without ice and read the evening paper in the living room, while Margaret prepared their early dinner. They dined on shoulder lamb chops or meat loaf, often on cheese and macaroni, which Margaret was fond of, and Margaret stirred her coffee with the silver baby spoon she had used the first evening Claude had met her, holding the spoon by the tip end of the handle in order to reach the bottom of the cup. After dinner, Claude retired to his study—a book-glutted cubicle with an old black leather couch in it, although he did not sleep here—to read and correct papers and to browse in his bookshelves for anything that piqued his aimless curiosity.
Every two weeks or so, he asked Professor Millikin, a Shakespeare scholar, or Assistant Professor George and his wife to come to dinner. Three or four times a year, the apartment was thrown open to about twelve students from his special readings classes, who came and ate Dundee cake and drank tea. Margaret would sit on a cushion on the floor, because there were never enough chairs, and of course one young man after another would offer his chair to her. “Oh, no, thank you!” Margaret would protest with a lisping coyness quite unlike her usual manner, “I’m perfectly comfortable here. Sitting on the floor makes me feel like a little girl again.” She would look up at the young men as if she expected them to tell her she looked like a little girl, too, which to Claude’s disgust the young men sometimes did. The little girl mood always came over Margaret in the company of men, and always made Claude sneer when he saw it. Claude sneered easily and uncontrollably, hiding it unconsciously in the act of putting his cigarette holder between his teeth, or rubbing the side of his nose with a forefinger. Claude had keen, suspicious brown eyes. No feature of his face was remarkable, but it was not a face one forgot either. It was the restlessness, the furtiveness in his face that one noticed first and remembered. At the teas, Margaret would use her baby spoon, too, which as likely as not would start a conversation. Then Claude would move out of hearing.
Claude did not like the way the young men looked at his wife—disappointedly, a little pityingly, always solemnly. Claude was ashamed of her before them. She should have been beautiful and gay, a nymph of the soul, a fair face that would accord with the love poems of Donne and Sidney. Well, she wasn’t.
Claude’s marriage to Margaret might have been comparable to a marriage to his housekeeper, if not for emotional entanglements that made him passionately hate her as well as passionately need her. He hated her childishness with a vicious, personal resentment. He hated almost as much her competent, maternal ministerings to him, her taking his clothes to the cleaners, for instance; which was all he tolerated her for, he knew, and why he had her now instead of his nymph. When he had been down with flu one winter and Margaret had waited on him hand and foot, he had sneered often at her retreating back, hating her, really hating her obsequious devotion to him. Claude had despised his mother and she, too, between periods of neglect and erratic ill-temper, had been capable of smothering affection and attention. But the nearest he came to expressing his hatred was when he announced casually, once a week or oftener:
“Winston’s coming over for a while tonight.”
“Oh,” Margaret would reply with a tremor in her voice. “Well, I suppose he’d like some of the raisin cake later. Or maybe a sandwich of the meat loaf.”
Winston loved to eat at Claude’s house. Or rather, he was always hungry. Winston was a genuinely starving poet who lived in a genuine garret at the top of a brownstone house in the West Seventies. He had been a student of Claude’s three years ago, a highly promising student whose brilliant, aggressive mind had so dominated his classmates that the classes had been hardly more than conversations between Claude and Winston. Claude was immensely fond of Winston and flattered by Winston’s fondness for him. From the first, it had excited Claude in a strange and pleasant way to catch Winston’s smile, Winston’s wink even, the glint of mad humor in his eyes, in the midst of Winston’s flurry of words in class. While at Columbia, Winston had published several poems in poetry magazines and literary magazines. He had written a poem called “The Booming Bittern,” a mournful satire on an undergraduate’s life and directionless rebellion, that Claude had thought might take the place in Winston’s career that “Prufrock” had taken in Eliot’s. The poem had been published in some quarterly but had attracted no important attention.
Claude had expected Winston to go far and do him credit. Winston had published only one small book of verse since leaving college. Something had happened to Winston’s easy, original flow of thought. Something had happened to his self-confidence after leaving college, as if the wells of inspiration were drying up along with the sap and vitality of his twenty-four-year-old body. Winston was thin as a rail now. He had always been thin, but now he slouched, hung his head like a wronged and resentful man, and his eyes under the hard, straight brows looked anxious, hostile and unhappy. He clung to Claude with the persistence of a maltreated child clinging to the one human being who had ever given him kindness and encouragement. Winston was working now on a novel in the form of a long poem. He had submitted part of it to his publishers a year ago, and they had refused to give him an advance. But Claude liked it, and Winston’s attitude was, the rest of the world be damned. Claude was keenly aware of Winston’s emotional dependence upon him, and managed to hide his own dependence upon Winston in a superior, patronizing manner that he assumed with Winston. Claude’s hostility to Margaret found some further release in the contempt that Winston openly showed for her intellect.
One evening, more than usually late in arriving, Winston slouched into the living room without a reply to Claude’s greeting. He was a head and a half taller than Claude, even stooped, his dark brown hair untidy with wind and rain, his overcoat clutched about his splinter of a body by the hands that were rammed into his pockets. Slowly and without a glance at Margaret, Winston walked across the living room towards Claude’s study.
Claude was a little annoyed. This was a mood he didn’t know.
“Listen, old man, can you lend me some money?” Winston asked when they were alone in the study, then went on over Claude’s surprised murmur, “You’ve no idea what it took for me to come here and ask you, but now it’s done, anyway.” He sighed heavily.
Claude had a sudden feeling it hadn’t taken anything, and that the despondent mood was only playacting. “You know I’ve always let you have money if you needed it, Winston. Don’t take it so seriously. Sit down.” Claude sat down.
Winston did not move. His eyes had their usual fierceness, yet there was an impatient pleading in them, too, like the eyes of a child demanding something rightfully his own. “I mean a lot of money. Five hundred dollars. I need it to work on. Five hundred will see me through six weeks, and I can finish my book without any more interruptions.”
Claude winced a little. He’d never see the money again if he lent it to Winston. Winston owed him about two hundred now. It occurred to Claude that Winston had not been so intense about anything since his university days. And it also came to him, s
wiftly and tragically, that Winston would never finish his book. Winston would always be stuck at the anxious, furious pitch he was now, which was contingent upon his not finishing the book.
“You’ve got to help me out this last time, Claude,” Winston said in a begging tone.
“Let me think it over. I’ll write you a note about it tomorrow. How’s that, fellow?”
Claude got up and went to his desk for a cigarette. Suddenly he hated Winston for standing there begging for money. Like anybody else, Claude thought bitterly. His lip lifted as he set the cigarette holder between his teeth, and Winston saw it, he knew. Winston never missed anything. Why couldn’t tonight have been like all the other evenings, Claude thought, Winston smoking his cigarettes, propping his feet on the corner of his desk, Winston laughing and making him laugh, Winston adoring him for all the jibes he threw at the teaching profession?
“You crumb,” Winston’s voice said steadily. “You fat, smug sonovabitch of a college professor. You stultifier and castrator of the intellect.”
Claude stood where he was, half turned away from Winston. The words might have been a blunt ramrod that Winston had thrust through his skull and down to his feet. Winston had never spoken to him like that, and Claude literally did not know how to take it. Claude was not used to reacting to Winston as he reacted to other people. “I’ll write you a note about it tomorrow. I’ll just have to figure out how and when,” he said shortly, with the dignity of a professor whose position, though not handsomely paid, commanded a certain respect.
“I’m sorry,” Winston said, hanging his head.
“Winston, what’s the matter with you?”
“I don’t know.” Winston covered his face with his hands.
Claude felt a swift sense of regret, of disappointment at Winston’s weakness. He mustn’t let Margaret know, he thought. “Sit down.”
Winston sat down. He sipped the little glass of whiskey Claude poured from the bottle in his desk as if it were a medicine he desperately needed. Then he sprawled his scarecrow legs out in front of him and said something about a book Claude had lent him the last time he was here, a book of poetry criticism. Claude was grateful for the change of subject. Winston talked with his eyes sleepily half-shut, jerking his big head now and then for emphasis, but Claude could see the glint of interest, of affection, of some indefinable speculation about himself through the half closed lids, and could feel the focus of Winston’s intense and personal interest like the life-bringing rays of a sun.
Later, they had coffee and sandwiches and cake in the living room with Margaret. Winston grew very animated and entertained them with a story of his quest for a hotel room in the town of Jalapa in Mexico, a story pulled like an unexpected toy from the hotchpotch of Winston’s mind, and by Winston’s words set in motion and given a life of its own. Claude felt proud of Winston. “See what I amuse myself with behind the door of my study, while you creep about in the dull prison of your own mind,” Claude might have been saying aloud as he glanced at Margaret to see if she were appreciating Winston.
Claude did not write to Winston the next day. Claude felt he was in no more need of money than usual, and that Winston’s crisis would pass if he and Winston didn’t communicate for a while. Then on the second evening, Margaret told Claude that she had lost her baby spoon. She had looked the house over for it, she said.
“Maybe it fell behind the refrigerator,” Claude suggested.
“I was hoping you’d help me move it.”
A smile pulled at Claude’s mouth as he seesawed the refrigerator away from the wall. He hoped she had lost the spoon. It was a silly thing to treasure at the age of fifty, sillier than her high school scrapbooks and the gilt baby shoe that had sat on her father’s desk and that Margaret had so unbecomingly claimed after his death. Claude hoped she had swept the spoon into the garbage by accident and that it was out of the house forever.
“Nothing but dust,” Claude said, looking down at the mess of fine, sticky gray dust on the floor and the refrigerator wires.
The refrigerator was only the beginning. Claude’s cooperation inspired Margaret. That evening she turned the kitchen inside out, looked behind all the furniture in the living room, even looked in the bathroom medicine cabinet and the clothes hamper.
“It’s just not in the house,” she kept saying to Claude in a lost way. After another day of searching, she gave up.
Claude heard her telling the woman in the next apartment about it.
“You remember it, I suppose. I think I once showed it to you when we had coffee and cake here.”
“Yes, I do remember. That’s too bad,” said the neighbor.
Margaret told the news-store man, too. It embarrassed Claude painfully as he stood there staring at the rows of candy bars and Margaret said hesitantly to the man she’d hardly dared to speak to before, “I did mean to pay our bill yesterday, but I’ve been a little distracted. I lost a very old keepsake—an old piece of silver I was very fond of. A baby spoon.”
Then at the phrase “an old piece of silver,” Claude realized. Winston had taken it. Winston might have thought it had some value, or he might have taken it out of malice. He could have palmed it that last night he was at the house. Claude smiled to himself.
Claude had known for years that Winston stole little things—a glass paperweight, an old cigarette lighter that didn’t work, a photograph of Claude. Until now, Winston had chosen Claude’s possessions. For sentimental reasons, Claude thought. Claude suspected that Winston had a vaguely homosexual attachment to him, and Claude had heard that homosexuals were apt to take something from someone they cared for. What then was more likely than that Winston would take an intimate possession or two from him, which he probably made a fetish of?
Three more days passed without the spoon’s turning up, and without a word from Winston. Margaret wrote some letters in the evenings, and Claude knew she was saying in each and every one of them that she had lost her baby spoon and that it was unforgivably careless of her. It was like a confession of some terrible sin that she had to make to everyone. And more, she seemed to want to tell everyone, “Here I stand, bereft.” She wanted to hear their words of comfort, their reassuring phrases about such things happening to everybody. Claude had seen her devouring the sympathy the delicatessen woman had offered her. And he saw her anxiety in the way she opened the letter from her sister in Staten Island. Margaret read the letter at the table, and though it didn’t say anything about the baby spoon, it put Margaret in better spirits, as if her sister’s not mentioning it were a guarantee of her absolution.
Leonard George and his wife Lydia came to dinner one evening, and Margaret told them about the spoon. Lydia, who was by no means stupid but very good at talking about nothing, went on and on about how disquieting the losses of keepsakes were at first, and how unimportant they seemed later. Margaret’s face grew gradually less troubled until finally she was smiling. After dinner, she said on her own initiative, “Well, who wants to play some bridge?”
Margaret put on a little lipstick now when they sat down to dinner. It all happened in about ten days. The inevitable pardons she got from people after confessing the loss of her baby spoon seemed to be breaking the barriers between herself and the adult world. Claude began to think he might never see that horrible coyness again when young men came to semester teas. He really ought to thank Winston for it, he supposed. It amused him to think of grasping Winston’s hand and thanking him for relieving the household of the accursed baby spoon. He would have to be careful how he did it, because Winston didn’t know that he knew about his petty thieveries. But perhaps it was time Winston did. Claude still resented Winston’s money-begging and that shocking moment of rudeness the last time he had visited. Yes, Winston wanted bringing into line. He would let Winston know he knew about the spoon, and he would also let him have three hundred dollars.
Win
ston hadn’t yet called, so Claude wrote a note to him, inviting him to dinner Sunday night, and saying he was prepared to lend him three hundred dollars. “Come early so we can have a little talk first,” Claude wrote.
Winston was smiling when he arrived, and he was wearing a clean white shirt. But the white collar only accented the grayness of his face, the shadows in his cheeks.
“Working hard?” Claude asked as they went into his study.
“You bet,” Winston said. “I want to read you a couple of pages about the subway ride Jake takes.” Jake was the main character in Winston’s book.
Winston was about to begin reading, when Margaret arrived with a shaker of whiskey sours and a plate of canapés.
“By the way, Winston,” Claude began when Margaret had left. “I want to thank you for a little service I think you rendered the last time you were here.”
Winston looked at him. “What was that?”
“Did you see anything of a silver spoon, a little silver baby spoon?” Claude asked him with a smile.
Winston’s eyes were suddenly wary. “No. No, I didn’t.”
Winston was guilty, and embarrassed, Claude saw. Claude laughed easily.“Didn’t you take it, Winston? I’d be delighted if you did.”
“Take it? No, I certainly didn’t.” Winston started towards the cocktail tray and stopped, frowning harder at Claude, his stooped figure rigid.
“Now look here—”Why had he begun it before Winston had had a couple of cocktails? Claude thought of Winston’s hollow stomach and felt as if his words were dropping into it. “Look here, Winston, you know I’m terribly fond of you.”
“What’s this all about?” Winston demanded, and now his voice shook and he looked completely helpless to conceal his guilt. He half turned round and turned back again, as if guilt pinned his big shoes to the floor.