Appointment in Samarra - John O'Hara [2]
Twenty after three. The country club dance would just be getting good, Irma supposed. The kids home from boarding school and college, and the younger marrieds, most of whom she knew by their first names, and then the older crowd. Next year she and Lute would be going to those dances and having fun. She could have gone to the one tonight, but she and Lute agreed that even though you knew the people by their first names, it wasn’t right to go down to the club unless you were a member. Ever time you went, whoever you were the guest of had to pay a dollar, and even at that you were not supposed to go under any circumstances more than twice in any quarter of the year. That was the rule. Next year she and Lute would be members, and it would be a good thing, because Lute would be able to make better contacts and sell more Cadillacs to club members. But as Lute said: We’ll join when we can afford it. I don t believe in that idea of mixing your social life with your business life too much. You get signing checks for prospects down at the country club, and you wind up behind the eight-ball. We’ll join when we can afford it. Lute was all right. Dependable and honest as the day is long, and never looked at another woman, even in fun. That was one reason why she was content to wait until they could really afford to join the club. If she had married, say, Julian English, she would be a member of the club, but she wouldn’t trade her life for Caroline English s, not if you paid her. She wondered if Julian and Caroline were having another one of their battle royals.
II The smoking room of the Lantenengo Country Club was so crowded it did not seem as though another person could get in, but people moved in and out somehow. The smoking room had become co-educational; originally, when the club was built in 1920, it had been for men only, but during many wedding receptions women had broken the rule against their entering; wedding receptions were private parties, and club rules could be broken when the whole club was taken over by one party. So the feminine members had muscled in on the smoking room, and now there were as many females as males in the room. It was only a little after three o clock, but the party had been going on forever, and hardly anyone wondered when it would end. Anyone who wanted it to end could go home. He would not be missed. The people who stayed were the people who belonged on the party in the first place. Any member of the club could come to the dance, but not everyone who came to the dance was really welcome in the smoking room. The smoking room crowd always started out with a small number, always the same people. The Whit Hofmans, the Julian Englishes, the Froggy Ogdens and so on. They were the spenders and drinkers and socially secure, who could thumb their noses and not have to answer to anyone except their own families. There were about twenty persons in this group, and your standing in the younger set of Gibbsville could be judged by the assurance with which you joined the nucleus of the smoking room crowd. By three o clock everyone who wanted to had been in the smoking room; the figurative bars were let down at about one-thirty, which time coincided with the time at which the Hofmans and Englishes and so on had got drunk enough to welcome anyone, the less eligible the better. So far nothing terrible had occurred. Young Johnny Dibble had been caught stealing liquor from someone s locker and was kicked in the behind. Elinor Holloway s shoulder strap had slipped or been pulled down, momentarily revealing her left breast, which most of the young men present had seen and touched at one time or another. Frank Gorman, Georgetown, and Dwight Ross, Yale, had fought, cried, and kissed after an argument about what the team Gorman had not made would have done to the team Ross was substitute halfback on. During one of those inexplicable silences, Ted Newton was heard to say to his wife: I ll drink as much as I God damn please. Elizabeth Gorman, the fat niece of Harry Reilly, whose social-climbing was a sight to behold, had embarrassed her uncle by belching loud and unashamed. Lorimer Gould III, of New York, who was visiting someone or other, had been told nine times that Gibbsville was dull as dishwater the year round, but everyone from out of town thought it was the peppiest place in the country at Christmas. Bobby Herrmann, who was posted for non-payment of dues and restaurant charges, was present in a business suit, gloriously drunk and persona grata at the inner sanctum (he was famous for having said, on seeing the golf course without a person playing on it: The course is rather delinquent today ), and explaining to the wives and fianc