do the same.
George and Ethel Allard take the Sabbath seriously, as do most working-class people from that generation who remember six-day workweeks of ten-hour days. I, on the other hand, have to take care of the Lord's English ivy creeping over my windowpanes.
I don't actually do any business on Sunday, but I do think about what has to be done on Monday morning as I do my Sunday chores.
Susan and I had cut ivy until about ten in the morning, then got cleaned up and dressed for church.
Susan drove the Jag, and we stopped at the gatehouse to pick up George and Ethel, who were waiting at their front door, George in his good brown suit, Ethel in a shapeless flower-print dress that unfortunately seems to be making a comeback with women who want to look like 1940s wallpaper. The Allards have a car, William Stanhope's old Lincoln that he left here when he and Charlotte Stanhope moved to Hilton Head, South Carolina, in '79. George sometimes doubled as the Stanhopes' chauffeur and is still a good driver despite his advancing years. But as there is now only one service at St Mark's, it would seem snooty for us not to offer to drive, and perhaps awkward for us to ask him to drive us. Maybe I'm being too sensitive, but I have to walk a thin line between playing lord of the manor and being George and Ethel's assistant grounds keeper. We all have so many hang-ups from the old days. Anyway, George isn't the problem; Ethel the Red is.
The Allards climbed in, and we all agreed it was another beautiful day. Susan swung south onto Grace Lane and floored it. Many of the roads around here were originally horse-and-buggy paths, and they are still narrow, twist and turn a bit, are lined with beautiful trees, and are dangerous. A speeding car is never more than a second away from disaster.
Grace Lane, which is about a mile long, has remained a private road. This means there is no legal speed limit, but there is a practical speed limit. Susan thinks it is seventy, I think it's about forty. The residents along Grace Lane, mostly estate owners, are responsible for the upkeep of the road. Most of the other private roads of the Gold Coast have sensibly been deeded to the county, the local village, the State of New York, or to any other political entity that promises to keep them drained and paved at about a hundred thousand dollars a mile. But a few of the residents along Grace Lane, specifically those who are rich, proud, and stubborn (they go together), have blocked attempts to unload this Via Dolorosa on the unsuspecting taxpayers.
Susan got up to her speed limit, and I could almost feel the blacktop fragmenting like peanut brittle.
High speeds seem to keep older people quiet, and the Allards didn't say much from the back, which was all right with me. George won't discuss work on Sundays, and we had exhausted other subjects years ago. On the way back, we sometimes talk about the sermon. Ethel likes the Reverend James Runnings because, like so many of my Episcopal brethren, the man is far to the left of Karl Marx.
Each Sunday we are made to feel guilty about our relative wealth and asked to share some of the filthy stuff with about two billion less fortunate people. Ethel especially enjoys the sermons on social justice, equality, and so forth. And we all sit there, the old-line blue bloods, along with a few new black and Spanish Episcopalians, and the remaining working-class Anglos, listening to the Reverend Mr Runnings give us his view of America and the world, and there is no question-and-answer period afterward.
In my father's and grandfather's day, of course, this same church was slightly to the right of the Republican Party, and the priests would direct their sermons more toward the servants and the working men and women in the pews, talking about obedience, hard work, and responsibilities, instead of about revolution, the unemployed, and civil rights. My parents, Joseph and Harriet, who were liberal for their day and social class, would gripe about the message from the pulpit. I don't think God meant for church services to be so aggravating. The problem with a church, any church, I think, is that unlike a country club, anyone can join. The result of this open-door policy is that for one hour a week, all the social classes must humble themselves before God and do it under the same roof in full view of one another. I'm not suggesting private churches or first-class pews up front like they used to have, and I don't think dimming the lights would help much. But I know that, years ago, it was understood that one sort of people went to the early service, and the other sort of people to the later one.
Having said this, I feel I should say something in extenuation of what could be construed as elitist and antidemocratic thoughts: First, I don't feel superior to anyone, and second, I believe fervently that we are all created free and equal. But what I also feel is socially dislocated, unsure of my place in the vast changing democracy outside these immediate environs, and uncertain how to live a useful and fulfilling life among the crumbling ruins around me. The Reverend Mr Hunnings thinks he has the answers. The only thing I know for certain is that he doesn't.
Susan slowed down as she approached the village of Locust Valley. The village is a rather nice place, neat and prosperous, with a small Long Island Railroad station in the middle of town, from which I take my train into New York. Locust Valley was gentrified and boutiquefied long before anyone even knew the words, though there is a new wave of trendy, useless shops coming in. St Mark's is on the northern edge of the village. It is a small Gothic structure of brownstone with good stained-glass windows imported from England. It was built in 1896 with the winnings of a poker game playfully confiscated by six millionaires' wives. They all went to heaven.
Susan found a parking space by hemming in a Rolls-Royce, and we all hurried toward the church as the bells tolled.
On the way back, Ethel said, 'I think Reverend Hunnings was right and we should all take in at least one homeless person for Easter week.' Susan hit the gas and took a banked curve at sixty miles per hour, causing the Allards to sway left and quieting Ethel.
George, ever the loyal servant, said, 'I think Father Hunnings should practise what he preaches. He's got nobody but him and his wife in that big rectory of theirs.'
George knows a hypocrite when he hears one.
I said, 'Mrs Allard, you have my permission to take a homeless person into your house for Easter week.'
I waited for the garrote to encircle my neck and the sound of cackling as it drew tight, but instead she replied, 'Perhaps I'll write to Mr Stanhope and ask his permission.'
Touche. In one short sentence she reminded me that I didn't own the place, and since Susan's father has the social conscience of a Nazi stormtrooper, Ethel got herself off the hook. Score one for Ethel.
Susan crested a hill at seventy and nearly ran up the rear end of a neat little TR-3 – 1964, I think. She swerved into the opposing lane, then swung back in front of the Triumph in time to avoid an oncoming Porsche. Susan, I believe, has hit upon a Pavlovian experiment in which she introduces the possibility of sudden death whenever anyone in the car says anything that doesn't relate to the weather or horses.
I said, 'Not too much spring rain this year.'
George added, 'But the ground's still wet from that March snow.'
Susan slowed down.
I drive to church about half the time, then there's the three-month boating season when we skip it altogether, so going to church is dangerous only about twenty times a year.
Actually, I notice that when Susan drives to and from church I feel closer to God than I do inside the church.
You might well ask why we go at all or why we don't change churches. I'll tell you, we go to St Mark's because we've always gone to St Mark's; we were both baptized there and married there. We go because our parents went and our children, Carolyn and Edward, go there when they are home on school holidays. I go to St Mark's for the same reasons I still go to Francis Pond to fish twenty years after the last fish was caught there. I go to carry out a tradition, I go from habit, and from nostalgia. I go to the pond and to the church because I believe there is still something there, though I haven't seen a fish or felt the presence of the Holy Spirit in twenty years.
Susan pulled into the drive, went through the open gates, and stopped to let the Allards out at the gatehouse. They bid us good day and went inside to their Sunday roast and newspapers.
Susan continued on up the drive. She said to me, 'I don't understand why he didn't come to the door.'
'Who?'
'Frank Bellarosa. I told you, I rode right up to the house and called up toward the lighted window. Then I pulled the bell chain at the servant's entrance.' 'Were you naked?'
'Of course not.'
'Well, then he had no interest in making small talk with a fully dressed, snooty woman on a horse. He's Italian.'
Susan smiled. 'The house is so huge,' she said, 'he probably couldn't hear me.'
