(1961) The Chapman Report (5 page)

From behind his desk, Geoffrey nodded his sage approval, but at the other end of the wire, Kathleen was unprepared, at this hour, for a discourse on Dr. Chapman’s method. Squirming impatiently in her kitchen chair-why had she ever accepted this beastly task from Grace?-she did not know what to say. At last she said rather lamely, “But you say you approve of Dr. Chapman?”

“My dear, this will be a memorable experience.”

“Then we can count on you?”

“Darling, I would sooner have missed Coleridge’s lectures on Milton and Shakespeare at the Philosophical Society.”

Kathleen felt safe to interpret this as an acceptance and made a relieved check after Teresa’s name, while Teresa, at her end, observed the social amenities by suggesting a luncheon in the near future.

After Teresa had returned the receiver to its cradle, Geoffrey rose, pocketed his notes from Vasari, and accompanied his wife outside to the canary-yellow Thunderbird convertible that had recently replaced the old Citroen. She slipped behind the wheel, and Geoffrey, who did not drive (“I wouldn’t permit him,” Teresa often explained. “It would be unsafe. His head is always in the clouds. Imagine Goethe driving in Los Angeles”), settled himself in the passenger seat beside her.

The daily morning ride from The Briars to Geoffrey’s art shop in Westwood Village, leisurely made along the curves and dips of Sunset Boulevard and then across the thoroughfare bisecting the university campus, took them fourteen minutes. They discussed Dr. Chapman not as one who was curious about their private sex life-which was regularly and efficiently performed twice weekly, after brandies, with brisk detachment, some romantic whispering, and full appreciation that the classical engagement had been sanctioned by Abelard and Heloise, Gustave Flaubert and Louise Colet, Archduke Rudolph and Marie Vetsera, Apollinaire and Marie Laurencin-but rather as one more cultural phenomenon in their splendid lives. It was understood, unspoken, that when Geoffrey wrote his memoirs of his years with art and artists, with Teresa’s close collaboration, of course, it might be amusing to devote one digressive page or paragraph to Dr. George G. Chapman, statistician of love.

Passing the university, they were reminded of the dinner they had attended the night before, at the charming hillside bungalow maintained by Professor Eric Mawson, who taught Impressionist Art at the school (though they forgave him this as they forgave Dickens his potboilers), and his tense, elderly sister. The guest of honor had been a young visiting Dutch artist, name unpronounceable (and no matter, for Geoffrey had decided at once that he had no talent), who had infuriated one and all by his dogmatic pronouncements on the classicists, Rubens among them, whom he held in contempt. When the young Dutchman had gravely stated that Hans van Meegeren, the creative forger, was the equal of Vermeer, whom he had imitated, Geoffrey had become incensed, and rebutted with telling acidity (most effectively extolling the inimitable tones of Vermeer’s edges), pausing only once to permit Teresa to deliver a well-received bon mot.

Geoffrey was incensed still, for classical and academic art had been his first passion, and a residue of guilt remained for having abandoned a dependable mistress for the flightier Futurists. “That young idiot-daring even to bracket Van Meegeren’s name with Vermeer,” he said now. “It’s like saying that William Ireland was the match of Shakespeare because he invented and forged Vortigern under the Bard’s name, and it was briefly accepted. It’s astonishing what these immature dabblers will do for attention.” “I think you handled him very well, dear,” said Teresa. “Sitting duck,” murmured Geoffrey with satisfaction as he located a small black cigar (with which a bewildered Parisian dealer supplied him monthly) and lighted it. “Well, here we are,” said Teresa.

They had drawn up on the busy side street just off Westwood Boulevard. Teresa kept the engine idling as she gazed past her husband at the two windows of the narrow but beautifully appointed shop. The Henry Moore bronze was still in one window, and the large D. H. Lawrence oil in the other. A placard, with a Dadaist border, invited interested parties to the weekly Wednesday night tea and conversazione.

“I’m getting tired of that Lawrence,” said Teresa. “It doesn’t wear well. He belongs in bookstores, not in an art shop.” “As a curiosity, it served,” said Geoffrey, mindful that the item had gained him a paragraph in a Sunday paper two weeks before. ‘Td much prefer that new Marinetti oil,” said Teresa. Her husband had recently overpaid an Italian dealer for an obtuse representation of a locomotive painted in 1910 by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the father of Futurism. Teresa detested it. She regarded Futurism as Philip Wilson Steer had once regarded the works of the Post-Impressionists, remembering that he had remarked, upon visiting an early Impressionists’ exhibit, “I suppose they have private incomes.” Teresa had suggested the Marinetti for the window because she wanted to remind Geoffrey that she was as progressive and intellectual as he.

“Ah, the Marinetti,” said Geoffrey, opening the car door. “Great minds, et cetera. I was going to display it tomorrow.” He stepped out on the walk, slammed the door, and stood looking down at his wife. “What is it today? Beach?”

“Just for an hour. It sets me up for the rest of the day.” “I won’t get out of here until six-thirty.” “I’ll be here, dear. Please don’t overwork.”

After he had disappeared into the shop, Teresa guided the convertible around the block to Wilshire Boulevard, ignored several young college boys who honked at her at the San Vincente turn (disdaining their rudeness, she was inexplicably pleased), and continued on to Santa Monica. After twenty-five minutes of driving, she reached the Pacific Coast Highway, where the traffic was light at this hour, and drove steadily in the salty breeze until she reached her destination, a mile before Malibu.

Her destination was a small, rocky dirt lot that jutted precariously over the wide sand beach, aiming its blunted bow directly at the white-capped breakers. For several years now, at first occasionally, then once a week, and more recently two and three times a week, Teresa had been spending her mornings in solitude on the beach below. Although the area was public, her cove was private, unpopulated by skin divers, families on picnic, or acrobatic muscle-men.

The discovery of this refuge-Constable’s Cove, Geoffrey had christened it the first and only time he had seen it, after John Constable’s “Weymouth Bay” in the National Gallery-had been a small miracle to Teresa. Soon after she and Geoffrey had decided that certain people were not meant to have children-cannibals of life and art - she had found mornings intolerable. Afternoons were possible-there was always enough to be done at home and at The

Village Green and with her friends-and evenings were busy and social, but mornings made the night too far away. And then, on a restless drive, she had found Constable’s Cove and never ceased returning there to stretch in the sand, bask in the blaze of sun, daydream, nap, or read to the steady beat of the blue waves.

Having parked and carefully drawn the hand brake, she circled the convertible, opened the trunk, and extracted blanket and a slender volume of Ernest Dowson’s verse, which included an appreciative essay on the poet. Glancing behind her, Teresa saw that the sun was full, but veiled by clouds and not yet hot. She decided to forgo her umbrella.

With the book under her arm and blanket in hand, her free hand protectively held forward lest she slip, she slowly made her way down the narrow, worn defile to the warm sand. A short distance away, there was a slight indentation in the cliff, and this was Constable’s Cove. Teresa trudged through the sand, lay down her volume, carefully spread her blanket, then dropped down upon it. For a moment, knees lifted high inside her arms, eyes closed to the sky, she reveled in the rays of the sun and the brushing sea wind. At last she opened her eyes, stretched out, leaning on an elbow, parted the Dowson book and began to read.

She followed the first and second verses patiently, waiting for what she knew was coming, and as she began the third verse, she smiled. Mouthing the words, she read:

I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind, Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng, Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind; But I was desolate and sick of an old passion, Yea, all the time, because the dance was long: I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

She had read this long ago, and now, rereading it, she instinctively saw its social and conversational value (Dowson, thank heavens, was not yet stale) and began to examine it again, to file it away in memory. As she resumed reading, a voice, not a voice but more a muted foghorn, shook her back to reality. “Come-on-ya-dope -lead me-pass it-I’m on the twenty-yard line-heave it!”

Teresa’s head snapped up from the book, and she sought the source of heinous interruption. On the sand, nearer the water, perhaps fifty yards off, were four grown men where before there

had been no one. Even at this distance, she could see that they were gigantic young men. Two were shoulder to shoulder bucking and bullying each other like angry elephants, in some sort of savage play. The other two were playing catch with a football, one, squat and intent, in denims, throwing to the largest of the four, in sweat shirt and trunks, who ran churning through the exploding sand to catch it.

Frowning her displeasure, Teresa continued to observe them. Like automata, the four continued their perpetual, unvarying movements, punctuating all with incomprehensible and often profane shoutings. For a while, they seemed to gravitate closer to her, and once the largest of the four came plowing within twenty yards of her, leaping high and easily, for one so brawny, to snatch the ball from the air. When he came down, he came down to a knee, then slowly rose, panting. She could see him plainly now: his dark hair cut in the so-called butch fashion and a red, open, perfectly wrought California outdoor face, with a faded gray sweat shirt emblazoned with the legend “Rams” covering a mammoth chest, tapering down to a narrow torso indecently covered by trunks so brief that a protective cup would have served as well. His thighs were bulging, and the legs were surprisingly slim.

Catching his breath, he looked up and saw Teresa staring at him. He grinned. Annoyed, she turned away and lifted her book. After a proper interval, she glanced over her shoulder. He was making his way back to his friends, bouncing the ball u-p and down in one hand.

Determined to ignore this’ temporary invasion of Constable’s Cove and its dominion, Teresa set her lips-again thin, since the paint had worn off-and reclined once more with Dowson. She reread the third verse five times, but the words blurred and made no sense. She could hear the lusty exertions nearby, and the occasional outcries, and much as she tried to think of Dowson, she thought only of Dr. Chapman. What did he ask women anyway? What did he expect to hear from them? What were the standards of satisfactory sex? But then, she reflected, Dr. Chapman would not know. He would know the quantitative pattern, but not what was best. Who was to determine what was best or right or gratifying? Suddenly, for the first time, she related Dr. Chapman’s inquiry to herself, her flesh, her bed, and she felt a thrill of apprehension and danger.

She looked off. All four were in the throwing and catching game

now, and after a few minutes she could see that the largest of them was also the most artful. By far the most artful.

Suddenly she stood up. She had been in the Cove only a half hour, instead of the usual hour or more, but now she wanted to be home, surrounded by the security of the statuary, and abstract oils, and rare old books, as far as possible from perspiration, and agility, and muscle. She wanted the sanctity of art, civilized, not artfulness, primitive.

With her volume in hand, she snatched up her blanket, hardly bothering to shake it out, and made her way toward the path, staring straight ahead at the small ridges of sand. At the foot of the path she paused briefly and looked off at the four barbarians. The largest was standing, hands on hips, legs spread wide, regarding her boldly (and, she thought in a flash, regarding himself, too, no doubt, as some embodiment of Hercules or Apollo). Suddenly, almost insolently, he waved to her. She shuddered, turned away, and hastened up the path to the convertible.

“Yes, I understand, Kathleen,” said Naomi Shields as she immersed herself deeper in the bathtub of hot water, awkwardly holding the receiver high to keep it from getting wet. “But, I repeat, I couldn’t be less interested. I don’t give a goddam about any Dr. Chapman, and I’m not doing a strip tease for some phoney scientist.”

Although Naomi, however crudely, did voice some of her own sentiments, Kathleen felt by now a certain loyalty to her assignment. “You speak as if he’s a charlatan.”

“Oh, I know. I’ve read about him-he’s Jesus H. Christ-and this is going to assure all married women they can hop in the hay as often as they please and not feel guilty because everyone else does it.”

“That’s not it at all, Naomi.” Kathleen did not know Naomi as well as the other women. They had met several times, casually, on Naomi’s rare visits to the Association. But she had, from time to time, heard stories, and if they were even half true, Naomi was less than inhibited in her conduct with the opposite sex. Because Kathleen was dealing with someone unrestrained, she was trying to be overly cautious. She determined to give Naomi one more chance before writing her off. “Perhaps some of us have-have the same feelings you do about a survey like this. But I still tell myself Dr.

Chapman’s record and intentions are the best, and the results can do some good.”

“Will it cure crippled children, or keep women from growing old, or stop husbands from being thoughtless?”

“No. But as Grace says-“

“That old bag.”

“Really, Naomi, she’s just trying. She says-and we know this-there’s too much ignorance about sex. Anything that can shed a ray of light will be healthy, normalizing. When we were kids, children knew nothing-“

“Says you! Listen, Katie, girl, when I was twelve years-there was an uncle living with us, a lecherous bastard-my old man was a salesman, always out of town-and this uncle got me down one day, breathing wine in my face, and pulled my bloomers off-” She broke off suddenly, pained by the hated remembrance. “Oh, hell,” she said, “it’s none of your business. I don’t know what I’ve been saying. I got up with a splitting headache.” Her temples felt clamped in a vise, twisting tighter and tighter. The two pills she had taken just before the telephone rang had not yet had any effect.