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  “The Food Committee is full of beans,” she muttered, using her apron to wipe the pulp off her hands.

  Gerard made some comforting murmur of “there, there” and got off the phone. Romance always came to this. His own love life, such as it was, was played far from the home field. He never brought girlfriends to the Club. It was important that the female members believed he was available, even though he had never acted on a single come-on. Seductive behavior made everyone happy. Always feeling wanted, never being had.

  He returned to contemplating the landscape, which never failed to provide him with a pleasant perspective, much as it surely had for Jonathan M. Curtis, of Curtis Mills, who in 1881 had acquired a taste for pastoral scenes on a tour of the English countryside. In what was then a rural area west of Boston, he had a manor house built of stucco and timber, with seven thatched cottages out back for staff, and a dozen imported Devonshire sheep to keep the lawns trim. Curtis died soon thereafter in a hunting accident, when his own gamekeeper, also imported, mistook him for a poacher. His wife sold the estate to the original Club corporation with the black bunting still on the door.

  Ever since then, members had been enjoying Curtis’s expansive view from the pillared porch or flagged terrace, but Gerard preferred his own. It was more select. The world was easier to swallow when contemplated through a single window. It cut out the periphery; it cut out the oversized homes that had sprung up in the woods on either side of the course, with their fanlights and columned entries all painfully out of scale, revealing the imperfections that come with enlargements. The only structure marring his line of vision was the pool house down the hill, fetchingly converted from the old slate-roofed stable, thatch being considered unsafe for horses. According to The History of the Eden Rock Country Club (privately printed on the occasion of the Club’s centennial, available in the gift shop for $29.95), the pool was part of the overhaul of 1924, the year the original six-hole golf course was redesigned by the legendary Alister MacKenzie to its current glory. The change had involved a major reordering of the natural elements, but to Gerard, the course looked like Earth on the Day of Creation, give or take a few hole markers. Two miles off in the wooded distance, a white church steeple rose up from the trees as if God had put His very signature on the landscape.

  Of course, there was another view. There was always another view. Gerard reflected sourly on the mess behind the club-house, with its kitchen Dumpster, employee parking lot, and mismatched tangle of aluminum utility sheds. A macadam drive led unceremoniously to the service entrance on the frontage road, and there, on the other side of the ivy-covered walls, lay the cheap housing and storage facilities where the city’s workers and materials were incubated. He was loathe to admit it, but he lived out there—if it could be said that he lived anywhere outside his office—in a complex that was more penal colony than apartment. Every day, on waking up in that grim outpost, he felt a wild rush of yearning for the Club.

  Just as he was beginning to relax in his swivel chair, his head groundskeeper appeared at his door, filling it. Gerard automatically glanced at Barry’s shoes to see if they were clean before motioning him to come in. But Barry, wearing a pained expression on his freckled face, shook his head. “Best come outside, boss.”

  Now what? Gerard thought. He turned to take a quick look in the Chippendale mirror behind him, straightening the collar of the black ERCC polo shirt under his plum linen jacket. Not bad. At twenty-nine he was considered young for his position, but he felt his studied manner and professional calm gave him the authority needed to do the job. He reached in his top drawer for a comb, which he swept through his dark hair, simultaneously examining his bleached teeth and admiring the balanced architecture of his features. His skin was so finely shaven as to make facial hair seem a crude throwback of the species.

  Barry was not so natty. He was well scrubbed and firmly packed but, like the rest of the staff, wore a beige T-shirt and khaki pants. Gerard deplored that franchised look, but it was a comfort to the members not to have to wonder whom to order about.

  The two men slipped out the side door to the employee parking lot, the only area staff was allowed to smoke. The crow parking lot, the members’ children called it, because a pack of crows, big as chickens, sat crouched along the Dumpster’s rim all day, waiting for workers to bring them their meals. The lid was always left open, in spite of the House & Grounds Committee’s tirades on keeping it closed, but who among the kitchen staff was tall enough or strong enough to close that panel of welded metal up and down? It was as though the birds had designed the thing themselves.

  “Won’t believe this,” said Barry, lighting both their cigarettes with an ERCC lighter that was no bigger than his pinky. “Charles Lambert killed a goose.”

  “Killed? On purpose?” Gerard tried to think if he’d ever seen Lambert in a rage. Members’ tyrannical frenzies were as common as lost balls, but outright violence? Not since Freddy McWhorter attacked Deacon Swanson with a putter last summer had there been a physical attack at the Club, but that was only after Mrs. McWhorter declared her intention to become the third Mrs. Swanson. And such incidents were quickly excused.

  “Freak accident at Plateau.” Barry squinted his pale blue eyes against the smoke as he placed his finger on his temple. “Smack in the head with a Pro V1. Andrew Sortwell called to say entrails were all over the grass, but Pole said it was a fairly bloodless shot.”

  “Was there a penalty?” Gerard looked out at the goose-studded course. Some birds had their necks straight up in a gargle, others had them bowed to the ground, but all of them, who numbered in the hundreds some days, were hell-bent on ripping out his expensive sod and fouling the water hazards.

  “Going to the Rules Committee.” Barry adjusted the tip of his ERCC duck-billed cap. “Mr. Lambert played the ball near the carcass, but there were bad feelings. Guess he felt he should have been given a chance to start over.”

  “We should pay him a bounty.”

  The two men looked up at the sound of honking, and three more geese landed in a plumpf and trotted with their wings spread in exaggerated breadth to slow them down. On the ground they were somewhat elegant in their Prince Albert coats, but they were buffoons in getting borne aloft, honked in continual panic while flying, and could barely land without falling on their necks.

  “Where should we bury it, boss?” Barry studied the ash on the end of his cigarette.

  Gerard exhaled smoke. “Just toss it in there.” He pointed to the Dumpster, just in time to watch a rat emerge from the top of the pile, sleek and sated. The Club’s vermin ignored the exterminator’s weekly bait, as they could well afford to. “What about getting some of that new UV turf treatment? It’s supposed to make geese sick as dogs.”

  Gerard had by necessity become an expert on ornithological control. He had tried addling, oiling, laser beams, and electronic black boxes, but the geese still went about their business unperturbed. The summer before, he thought he had the problem licked with three Border collies trained to patrol the course and scare off the geese, but that ended in disaster. If the working dogs were allowed to run free, the members claimed, so could theirs. The experiment lasted one week, although the Club had to pay for the whole season, as contracted, plus all the vet bills.

  Barry whistled through his teeth as he crushed his cigarette underfoot, then ran his fingers through his rusty upright hair. “Don’t know. Pretty expensive stuff. Balloon eyes worked okay a couple of years ago until the birds got used to them. We can try them on this generation.”

  Gerard looked around and shrugged. “Okay.” He sighed. “And while you’ve got the catalog out, let’s see if there’s anything short of bazookas we haven’t tried yet. For now, send Pole out in a cart and have him scare the geese off the fairways. At cocktail hour, I want the members to see we’ve taken decisive action.” He tossed his butt into the Dumpster and gave Barry a thumbs-up.

  Barry stood where he was, pretending to watch two crows descend on the g
arbage, but when Gerard was out of sight, he hurried to his office in one of the utility buildings. He didn’t like all that talk about making geese sick. It made his stomach turn. Fact of the matter was, ever since Gerard sent him to addle eggs out on the island in May, he was a changed man. He’d only found one active nest so late in the season, but he’d done his job, luring the mating pair away with cornmeal in order to shake their eggs to sterility. But the first egg he shook broke in his hand, and instead of a runny yolk, a wet chartreuse gosling fell to the bottom of the nest.

  “Knock me down with a feather,” he’d said. “How cute is that?” He’d touched the little bird, awed by the newness of life.

  He’d heard its parents coming through the brush, and although they had no teeth, the business edge of a gander’s wing was a powerful weapon. He ran his hand over the gosling and blew hot breath on him to keep him warm until they arrived. There was no fear in the little fellow’s glassy gaze, only openness. Even adoration. Barry had never felt anything but ill will toward the creatures that ate and dug their way through his greens—the deer, rabbits, voles, and who knows what else, but the worst were the geese. So many of them, so aloof and superior. But they must not start out that way, because look, a few seconds old and the little thing seemed to recognize him as an equal—or a god.

  The approaching sound of snapping twigs and rustling feathers grew loud and frantic. Frogs plopped into the water for safety. With a lump in his throat, Barry waved good-bye to the gosling, who raised himself up on his teeny webbed feet and shook his prickly stub of a tail. Barry escaped through the underbrush, but so did the gosling, still groggy and damp, with its naked wings in the air, leaping and jumping to catch up. Barry stopped, intending to bring the baby back to its nest, but when he held it in his hands, he just couldn’t. Fate had thrown them together, man and beast, and who was he to question such a force?

  Barry unlocked his office door and looked over his bulky shoulder before closing it. “Forbes,” he whispered.

  “Beep!” And the six-week-old foot-high gosling came running to his open arms.

  Chapter Three

  The Rules of the Game

  ARIETTA WINGATE had skin the color of egg whites, with hands as smooth and veined as a good Stilton. Her eyes were a striking Nordic blue, fringed with lashes thick with mascara. She touched her downy hair to check for loose strands but found it perfect, as always. With the help of her cane, she inched her chair next to the library’s fireplace, whose verde antico marble mantel was carved with Roman divinities. The fire she’d requested seemed token in its cavernous maw, which was large enough to roast a heretic. Yet the small flame was necessary because even in July the paneled room was raw, receiving only the weakest sun through the casement windows framed in heavy velvet. The fire also served, as Arietta well knew, as a heavy-handed symbol of the hearth.

  She sat with care, adjusting herself on the relic beneath her, then arranged her burgundy linen skirt around her legs. The furniture was positively punitive, but she would not have it changed. Gerard Wilton, that wheedler, once broached the subject with her, explaining that if he put cushions on the rush seats, the committees might actually want to meet in there, the room for which such events were intended, instead of in the lounge. Only the Board of Governors met in the library, and then only on rare occasions for the privacy of formal vote taking. That the others held their meetings elsewhere was fine with Arietta. She’d just as soon have the place to herself and her teas, and even now, waiting for Madeline Lambert, she enjoyed the library as her own. The stained-glass lamp over the table glowed, darkening the recessed shadows of the wooden ceiling, as coffered as a honeycomb. The ambient light washed over the smoke-stained portraits of past Club presidents along the walls, casting them deep in thought.

  The door creaked. “Hello, Arietta.” Madeline waved away a dark puff that rose from the hearth when she opened the door. Then she locked it behind her, slapping the heavy deadbolt in place with the edge of her hand. Madeline, dressed in straight gray slacks and tan blouse with a pink cameo at the collar, was a handsome woman, thought Arietta, with her good posture and elegant profile. A smile would make her beautiful, but composure was much the better. It was odd, now, to think of what a shock it had been, back in the late seventies, when Charles brought her home to the Club, an unnaturally blond and outgoing California girl whose own mother had never even married. Good Lord. Who knew how the daughter would behave? But Charles had chosen wisely, because after only a few blunders—casual touching, singing to herself, a preference for revealing clothes—Madeline had fit right in. Even her blond hair had mellowed into light brown with professional highlights.

  Madeline kissed Arietta on her suede cheek. “You’re looking well today.”

  “Traffic?” Arietta asked in a corrective tone, pretending as always that she’d been kept waiting.

  But Madeline was punctual to a fault. Even as they spoke, they heard four bells from the church in town, and they both glanced instinctively at the imposing grandfather clock, which could neither confirm nor deny. It had come with the house, complete with steeples and brass fittings, inlaid with bits of ivory and Roman numerals. It had everything but time. The clock had stopped at six thirty during World War II, when there was no one on the home front to fix it. Afterward, in the postwar years of high suburban living, the Furnishings Committee, an elite subcommittee of House & Grounds, decided it was more charming to let the clock be so they would not be pestered at parties by its insistent chimes, reminding them of the ephemeral nature of their fun.

  “You know I’m exactly on time.” Madeline sat down in a peaked chair, which was so Gothic it might have been stolen from a parsonage.

  “Let’s move on now, dear. We don’t want to be caught short before Ellen Bruner arrives.” She peered closely at Madeline’s shirt pocket. “What is that?”

  “Oh.” Madeline pulled out a prickly sprig of tight white rosebuds, the heads already limp. “I forgot all about them. I pinched them from the garden this morning.”

  “Toss them in the fire before they look any worse.” Arietta unscrewed the brass pistol handle of her cane and pulled out an exquisitely ornate key.

  Madeline looked at her sprig. It was too late to revive the blooms, wasn’t it? She placed it on the little flame, where it hissed rather than burned.

  Arietta held the key out to Madeline by its red silk ribbon like a hypnotist, then pulled it back. “Did you lock the door?” she asked.

  “You watched me do it.” Madeline was slightly exasperated that after all these years Arietta still questioned her capability. She took the key from her and walked to the distant corner of the library, near where the papier-mâché globe stood on its intricate iron base, another original artifact. Arietta followed, tapping the Oriental carpet with her cane, severing the indigo fibers from their warp. She pulled a chair right behind Madeline, who knelt before a cabinet.

  “Well?” Arietta leaned forward, both hands on her cane.

  Madeline was letting a moment of nausea pass, having lingered awhile at the Club the night before drinking cake-batter martinis. That Beryl Hall. The woman kept close tabs on Boston’s cocktail culture and passed her lethal information on to Enrico, the Club’s head bartender, whose dark face was as impassive as an executioner’s. Beryl then forced these concoctions on innocent wine-sippers like herself, who knew better than to accept, but she had succumbed out of politeness, as always. Looking back, it was just as well that Charles had made them leave early, or she would have gotten a good deal drunker. He’d been so antsy since that silly goose incident last week, and there’d been no arguing with him. But as she was leaving in her tipsy fog, she’d noticed Ellen Bruner conspicuously drinking sparkling water with lemon and patting her still-flat stomach, making a case for pregnancy. It gave Madeline pause. She wondered if a lawyer might balk at recording the intimate details of her impregnation in the book, the Club’s biological genealogy as opposed to the merely legal. Maybe an attorney wouldn’
t see the law as being secondary to nature. “I’m a little worried about today. I hope Ellen won’t give us trouble.”

  “Nonsense. She’s in family practice, isn’t she? She’ll see the reason for the book more than most.”

  That reason was not to be found anywhere in The History of the Eden Rock Country Club. According to Arietta, there’d been stiff competition when the Club was being formed, with two men, Enoch Winship and Oliver Stallybrass, duking it out for president. Clethera Winship, a proper Victorian matron with an industrial age temperament, extended certain courtesies to one of the incorporators, Granville Barker, who repaid her many kindnesses by voting for her husband. The upshot was that her family enjoyed the benefits of such a position in terms of social and business contacts. They were invited into all the right homes, which meant access to potential investors for Enoch’s fledgling securities business, which meant more money, which meant more access, and on and on, a felicitous intersection of wealth and friendship.

  The only glitch had been the baby girl born the following season, who had the pointed little ears of a fruit bat, just like Barker’s. When the girl was ten, Clethera got sick and, in her fever, feared that her daughter, in her absence and in the closed world of the Club, might marry one of Barker’s children. Who could warn her that such a marriage could not take place?

  Clethera called for her childhood friend and comember, Pauline, and confessed the matter without naming names, at which point Pauline admitted that one of her own was not her husband’s, without naming names. So they each wrote the identity of the biological sires in a book and hid it well. From then on, the two of them kept their eyes open, drawing out young wives for questioning, and in time a system developed of inviting the newly pregnant to tea in the library. There, a discussion would ensue about the need to protect the future in which the young women were about to be delivered. They were asked to search their souls, for the sake of their children, and if there was any question about paternity, it needed to be scribbled on the blank space. And when, years hence, that child was shopping for cuff links for the ushers, a steward of the book would check the background of both parties to make sure the coast was clear. Sadly, this spring it had not been clear for Eliot Farnsworth and Nina Rundlett.