Recessional: A Novel (38 page)

It had been a dull visit, so Zorn would have been surprised if, when he left the table, someone had predicted: “Harry Ingram is
about to catapult the Palms into national and even international notoriety, and in doing so, will account for a dramatic end-of-year rise in rentals, converting your center into one of the top moneymakers in the Taggart chain.”

These unlikely events started one hot June day at four in the morning with a telephone call from London, where it was already nine o’clock: “Hello! Am I speaking to the Palms? Have you a tenant named Harry Ingram? Could you put me through to him?”

The night operator who had answered the phone pointed out: “Sir! It’s four o’clock in the morning here. We don’t like to call the guests at this hour. They become irritated.”

“I assure you, Mr. Ingram will want to bear the burden of my interruption. Please ring him.” And when a sleepy, not well-focused Harry came to the phone, the man from London gave him startling news: “Are you Harry Peter Denham Robert Ingram? Good. I have surprising news for you. The eleventh Igraham baronet of Illsworth died yesterday, as his younger brother did two weeks ago. Since neither brother left any heirs, the title passes to the collateral branch of the great Chisholm family, and the heir of that line is you. As of this moment you are now Sir Harry Ingram, Baronet.” Pausing for some moments to allow this astonishing information to register, the London man explained: “In our system there are many, many men entitled to be called Sir Thomas This or That, and when they die their title dies with them. But anyone with the title Sir Thomas Jones, Baronet, not only has the title, but his heirs also inherit the title. It’s rather nice, really, to be a baronet. Am I correct in my records? You have no heirs, male or female?”

“Never been married,” the bewildered baronet replied, at which his informant said: “As I thought. This means that when you die, barring the birth of a child before then, which I suppose is unlikely…you are seventy-two? Correct. So at your death the title will pass to another cadet line, the one in Australia. Do you by chance happen to know them? Name of Stanhope? No. Well, that’s how the matter stands, and may I be the first to congratulate you, Sir Harry?” and he hung up.

At the same time that the official was informing Harry, his staff was informing the London press corps that one of England’s titles had now passed into the safekeeping of an elderly resident in a Florida retirement home, and news of this amazing development had been sent from the London bureaus of the American news agencies
to their offices in the United States, where it was instantly circulated to newspapers and radio and television stations. Since the London release had identified the nursing home as the Palms in Tampa, Florida, the telephones in that establishment started ringing, and two television stations soon dispatched camera crews to the scene.

By the time dawn broke, Nurse Varney was already commanding the telephone system while Andy and Ken Krenek were directing traffic. Ambassador St. Près had been alerted as someone who might understand the niceties of the situation, and he was in Harry Ingram’s little room handling the phone there. It was a tumultuous morning at the Palms as word flashed through the halls that “our Harry Ingram has inherited a title in England.” It was generally supposed that he was to be at least an earl, more likely a duke.

As the morning progressed Ambassador St. Près explained again and again: “In the British hierarchy it’s the next-to-lowest title that can be given. Below it is the simple honorific Sir Harry Ingram. Next above that is what he has, Sir Harry Ingram, Baronet. Above that are the viscounts and earls, and above those come the marquis and so on up to the grandest of all, the dukes, Harry Ingram, duke of Sussex, or whatever other majestic title his family might be entitled to.” And that launched the epoch known at the Palms as “the hunt for British nobility.” Any book that gave the histories of the great families of English history was grabbed at, as were back copies of magazines that had portraits of the various British leaders, biographies of Princess Di and Wallis Warfield Simpson, or anything else that even remotely pertained to the elevation of ordinary Harry Ingram into the aristocracy of Great Britain. Ambassador St. Près struggled so constantly to correct misperceptions that in frustration he suggested that some night after dinner he would be glad to explain what their respected friend Harry Ingram was getting into.

To his surprise, practically the entire population of Gateways, all hundred and ninety-four, appeared, with latecomers having to bring their own chairs. His talk was a masterpiece of elucidation, delivered in proper ambassadorial style.

“The word
nobility
, in Great Britain at least, refers only to men and women holding the top five ranks of honors in this descending order: duke, marquis, earl, viscount and baron. They are known as
the peerage
. Now you must understand that in the British Isles, the honorific
Sir
is very widely used to bestow a knighthood on any citizen who performs exceptionally well in public life. A leading jockey
can become a Sir. A leading actor. Famous cricket players. Queen Elizabeth has awarded the title in honorary form to Reagan and Bush. And it’s customary, if a British foreign officer such as an ambassador has served well, to award him the title in recognition.”

“Would you be a Sir in England?” a woman asked, and he said truthfully: “I suppose my services in Africa might have warranted it. But more important, I would think, is the fact that if the Palms were in some British village, one or two of our residents might well be Sir this or Sir that, and I’ll leave it to you to speculate on whom I have in mind.”

This caused some buzzing, after which he said: “Now you understand that if I were Sir Richard St. Près, then when I die, my title dies with me. My wife, if I had one, would not be legally entitled to be called Lady St. Près, but her friends, out of courtesy, would continue to call her so. Then it would vanish. Otherwise the landscape would be cluttered with Knights and their Ladies.” He paused dramatically: “But the title that our Sir Harry has inherited is a different kettle of fish, because he can write after his name, Bart., meaning baronet, and in that case his title does pass to his heir. But since Harry has no heir, so far as we know, when he dies his baronetcy will pass to the oldest male member of the next cadet line—”

“What does that mean?” a man asked, and he said: “A subsidiary branch of the family, inherited through some younger brother or close relative. I believe Sir Harry has already been informed that at his death his title passes to the cadet line in Australia. Unless he has a son in the meantime.” This brought laughter, after which the ambassador said in summation: “I do think it extraordinary that in a nation like ours, which fought a war of independence to break away from the despotic rule of King George III, we should now be royalty-crazy.
People
magazine would fade away if they couldn’t write about Princess Di and Fergie, and those tabloids at the supermarket checkouts would vanish.” He became confidential: “I was vacationing in that fine Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, out in the Colorado Rockies, years ago, when H. G. Wells and others in Great Britain were agitating for the abolition of the British royal family. Some English guests were distraught by the effrontery of such a suggestion, but one clever Scot among them said: ‘Not to worry, my friends. The King and Queen will never be dethroned. The people of Iowa would not allow it.’ And he was correct. We have the best of both possible worlds. The
British royal family belongs to us, too, but we leave all their expenses to the Brits.”

When one listener, eager to air her knowledge of matters regal, said: “Of course, he’ll go to Buckingham Palace and the Queen will tap him on the shoulder with a sword—” St. Près quickly interrupted her. He explained that such a ceremony takes place only when a new title is bestowed, and never for the heir of an existing one. “Then it becomes purely a family affair,” he concluded, to the obvious disappointment of his audience.

And then everything fell apart when an official at the British embassy in Washington explained that Harry could not inherit the title unless he gave up his United States citizenship.

When the limitations of his title were explained to Harry, he showed no disappointment whatever. When they asked how he could be complacent about the puncturing of a rather grand balloon, he said quietly: “No problem. I’ve always been a British subject.”

“But you told me yourself,” St. Près said petulantly, “you’d never left the United States. Never been in Britain.”

“My father was so loyal to the crown that in Canada he remained a ‘loyal subject of the King,’ as he expressed it. I remember him taking me to an office in Ottawa and registering me as a British citizen.”

“But you told the man from the embassy that you had American citizenship.”

“That’s right. In World War Two I volunteered for the United States Army, and you have a law which says that any foreigner who serves in an American uniform fighting against the enemy is entitled to full American citizenship. And I accepted it. So I have dual citizenship, British by birth, American because of my heroism in battle. I received medals, you know.”

And so Harry Ingram of the Palms became the legitimate holder of the baronetcy. In due course the Palms returned to a degree of normalcy that had been abandoned during its intense preoccupation with British aristocracy. But residents continued to refer to the nondescript little man as “our Sir Harry, Bart.”

When it became obvious that Betsy Cawthorn would soon reach the point when she could try to walk completely alone, with no walker, no cane, no one holding her by the elbow, Dr. Zorn was so pleased by
her progress that he called Oliver Cawthorn in Chattanooga: “Betsy’s done wonders. We have this system of parallel bars at handgrip height—maybe two and a half feet apart. A patient who wants to test her new legs can walk between the bars and catch herself if she feels she’s about to fall. With that security, Betsy’s been walking, yes, truly walking to the end of the bars, then turning around by herself, and walking back.”

When Cawthorn expressed his delight at this news, Zorn added a dampening note: “Remember, technically she is not walking alone. Those parallel bars close at hand, they’re a tremendous help, a mental crutch. The big test comes when she stands completely clear of the bars—with no one to catch her if she falls—and she walks across the room.”

“When might that happen?”

“With Betsy, who knows? Soon, since she feels it’s a personal challenge.”

“Would it muddle things if I flew down to visit with her for the next few days?”

“I believe she’d love it.”

So Oliver Cawthorn flew down to Tampa, visited with his daughter and took her out to dinner at Berns’, the famous Tampa steak house, where, after the main course, she was handed a menu offering her more than a hundred different desserts to choose from. She selected a New York–style cherry cheesecake and found it delicious. As her father helped her to her room that night, she said: “It was a memorable evening, Dad. The last of phase one. Tomorrow I’ll be walking. And I’d really love you to be here.”

On the next day, only a few months after Bedford Yancey took charge of this crippled girl whose willpower had been destroyed, she entered the rehabilitation center on her walker, moved easily to the parallel bars, which she knew she could depend on for support if she needed it, and stood erect for some moments at the far end of the bars. Then, smiling brightly at Yancey, her father, Nora, and, especially Dr. Zorn, she said with a mock-heroic laugh: “Stand back while I make my maiden flight!”

With that she stepped forward tentatively, looked as if she might fall, but then recovered her stability and, with a slow smile illuminating her face, confidently moved her left foot forward. Taking a big breath, she paused a moment to smile at her father and Dr. Zorn. Then with her confidence bolstered, she took a series of steps that
were miraculously normal. With a cry of triumph and a huge smile she approached the men who were watching with bated breath. They half expected her to end her adventure by precipitately collapsing into someone’s arms. But Nora, who was also watching, thought otherwise: She’s going to follow this through.

Nora had guessed right, for when Betsy finished her walk, she took three more steps sideways to where Dr. Zorn waited. When she stood face-to-face with him she threw her arms wide, grabbed him for support and kissed him fervently.

Nora grinned delightedly, but everyone else who saw her bold audacity was taken aback, no one more so than Andy Zorn, who recoiled instinctively and almost unbalanced the girl who clung to him. He knew she had a deep appreciation for his saving her life and he had worried earlier that she might have fixated on him as a sort of savior. But he also knew that such fixations were common among patients who had suffered trauma and that they usually passed without doing damage to either the patient or the doctor.

There were, however, other instances—like the hideous affair of his friend and colleague Ted Reichert, M.D. Recalling that disaster made him shudder, and later that day as he paced along the banks of the channel trying to collect himself, he reflected on how he himself might stumble into Reichert’s snake pit if he allowed chance experiences with a beautiful young patient to take root and blossom into unforeseen and uncontrollable passions.

Dr. Reichert had been the youngest member of the staff at Zorn’s Chicago clinic. He was an excellent internist, but the older members of his team quickly noticed that in one aspect of his profession he was badly flawed: although married to a lovely woman who had given him two children, he had a fatal propensity for taking his more attractive women patients to area motels, where there was a good chance he might be recognized. Even after he’d had a couple of close calls, with one irate husband ready to protest publicly, he persisted in his dangerous behavior.

Andy, as senior member of the team, was given the unpleasant duty of calling Reichert to his office and reprimanding him: “Ted, you’re fishing in very dangerous waters.”