something as simple and yet complete as that But such simple excitement seems to be one
of life’s qualities that slips away almost unnoticed, and its rediscovery as one grows older
is always something of a surprise, like finding a black hair or two in one’s comb years
after one had last found such a thing.
I paid the driver, got out, and walked towards the four steps leading to the door. As I
mounted them, my excitement curdled into plain apprehension (a feeling the old are much
more familiar with). What exactly was I doing here?
The door was of thick panelled oak, and to my eye it looked as stout as the door of a
castle keep. There was no doorbell that I could see, no knocker, no closed circuit TV
camera mounted unobtrusively hi the shadow of a deep eave, and, of course, no
Waterhouse waiting to take me in. I stopped at the foot of the steps and looked around.
Thirty-Fifth Street suddenly seemed darker, colder, more threatening. The brownstones
all looked somehow secret, as if hiding mysteries best not investigated. Their windows
looked like eyes.
Somewhere, behind one of those windows, there may be a man or woman
contemplating murder, I thought. A shudder worked up my spine. Contemplating it …or doing it.
Then, suddenly, the door was open and Stevens was there.
I felt an intense surge of relief. I am not an overly imaginative man, I think – at least
not under ordinary circumstances – but this last thought had had all the eerie clarity of
prophecy. I might have babbled aloud if I hadn’t glanced at Stevens’s eyes first His eyes
did not know me. His eyes did not know me at all.
Then there was another instance of that eerie, prophetic clarity; I saw the rest of my
evening in perfect detail. Three hours in a quiet bar. Three martinis (perhaps four) to dull
the embarrassment of having been fool enough to go where I wasn’t wanted. The
humiliation my mother’s advice had been intended to avoid – that which comes with
knowing one has overstepped.
I saw myself going home a little tipsy, but not in a good way. I saw myself merely
sitting through the cab ride rather than experiencing it through that childlike lens of
excitement and anticipation. I heard myself saying to Ellen, It wears thin after a while …
Waterhouse told the same story about winning a consignment of T-bone steaks for the 3rd
Battalion in a poker game … and they play Hearts for a dollar a point, can you believe it?
… go back? … / suppose I might, but I doubt it. And that would be the end of it. Except, I suppose, for my own humiliation.
I saw all of this in the nothing of Stevens’s eyes. Then the eyes warmed. He smiled
slightly and said: ‘Mr Adley! Come in. I’ll take your coat.’
I mounted the steps and Stevens closed the door firmly behind me. How different a
door can feel when you are on the warm side of it! He took my coat and was gone with it.
I stood in the hall for a moment, looking at my own reflection in the pier glass, a man of
sixty-three whose face was rapidly becoming too gaunt to look middle-aged. And yet the
reflection pleased me.
I slipped into the library.
Johanssen was there, reading his Wall Street Journal. In another island of light, Emlyn
McCarron sat over a chessboard opposite Peter Andrews. McCarron was and is a
cadaverous man, possessed of a narrow, bladelike nose; Andrews was huge, slope-
shouldered, and choleric. A vast ginger-coloured beard sprayed over his vest. Face to face
over the inlaid board with its carved pieces of ivory and ebony, they looked like Indian
totems: eagle and bear.
Waterhouse was there, frowning over that day’s Times. He glanced up, nodded at me
without surprise, and disappeared into the paper again.
Stevens brought me a Bombay martini, unasked.
I took it into the stacks and found that puzzling, enticing set of green volumes again. I
began reading the works of Edward Gray Seville that night. I started at the beginning,
with These Were Our Brothers. Since then I have read them all, and believe them to be
eleven of the finest novels of our century.
Near the end of the evening there was a story -just one -and Stevens brought brandy
around. When the tale was told, people began to rise, preparing to leave. Stevens spoke
from the double doorway which communicated with the hallway. His voice was low and
pleasant, but carrying:
‘Who will bring us a tale for Christmas, then?’
People stopped what they were doing and glanced around. There was some low,
goodnatured talk and a burst of laughter.
Stevens, smiling but serious, clapped his hands together twice, like a grammar school
teacher calling an unruly class to order. ‘Come, gentlemen – who’ll bring the tale?’
Peter Andrews, he of the sloped shoulders and gingery beard, cleared his throat. ‘I have
something I’ve been thinking about I don’t know if it’s quite right; that is, if it’s -‘
‘That will be fine,’ Stevens interrupted, and there was more laughter. Andrews had his
back slapped good naturedly. Cold draughts swirled up the hallway as men slipped out.
Then Stevens was there, as if by benign magic, holding my coat for me. ‘Good
evening, Mr Adley. Always a pleasure.’
‘Do you really meet on Christmas night?’ I asked, buttoning my coat I was a little
disappointed that I was going to miss Andrews’s story, but we had made firm plans to
drive to Schenectady and keep the holiday with Ellen’s sister.
Stevens managed to look both shocked and amused at the same time. ‘In no case,’ he
said. ‘Christmas is a night a man should spend with his family. That night, if no other.
Don’t you agree, sir?’
‘I certainly do.’
‘We always meet on the Thursday before Christmas. In fact, that is the one night of the
year when we’re assured a large turnout.’
He hadn’t used the word members, I noticed – just happenstance or neat avoidance?
‘Many tales have been spun out in the main room, Mr Adley, tales of every sort, from
the comic to the tragic to the ironic to the sentimental. But on the Thursday before
Christmas, it’s always a tale of the uncanny. It’s always been that way, at least as far back
as I can remember.’
That at least explained the comment I had heard on my first visit, the one to the effect
that Norman Stett should have saved his story for Christmas. Other questions hovered on
my lips, but I saw a reflected caution in Stevens’s eyes. Do you catch my drift? It was not
a warning that he would not answer my questions; it was, rather, a warning tnat I should
not even ask them.
‘Was there something else, Mr Adley?’
We were alone in the hall now. All the others had left And suddenly the hallway
seemed darker, Stevens’s long face paler, his lips redder. A knot exploded in the fireplace
and a red glow washed momentarily across the polished parquet floor. I thought I heard,
from somewhere in those as-yet-unexplored rooms beyond, a kind of slithery bump. I did
not like the sound. Not at all.
‘No,’ I said in a voice that was not quite steady. ‘I think not.’
‘Goodnight, then,’ Stevens said, and I crossed the threshold. I heard the heavy door
close behind me. I heard the lock turn. And then I was walking towards the lights of 2nd
Avenue, not looking back over my shoulder, somehow afraid to look back, as if I might
see some frightful fiend matching me stride for stride, or glimpse some secret better kept
than known. I reached the corner, saw an empty cab, and flagged it.
‘More war stories?’ Ellen asked me that night She was in bed with Philip Marlowe, the
only lover she has ever taken.
“There was a war story or two,’ I said, hanging up my overcoat. ‘Mostly I sat and read a
book.’
‘When you weren’t oinking.’
‘Yes, that’s right. When I wasn’t oinking.’
‘Listen to this: “The first time I ever laid eyes on Terry Lennox he was drunk in a
Rolls-Royce Stiver Wraith outside the terrace of the Dancers,”‘ Ellen read.’ “He had a young-looking face but his hair was bone white. You could tell by his eyes that he was
plastered to the hairline, but otherwise he looked like any other nice young guy in a
dinner jacket who had been spending too much money in a place that exists for that
purpose and for no other.” Nice, huh? It’s -‘
‘The Long Goodbye’ I said, taking off my shoes. ‘You read me that same passage once
every three years. It’s part of your life-cycle.’
She wrinkled her nose at me. ‘Oink-oink.’
“Thank you,’ I said.