CHAPTER III
The Lennox apartment was on Knickerbocker Square which is one of scores of hidden relics of the past concealed on The Rock. There are elongated sycamore trees corseted with cement, a Greek cross of gravel paths, four square patches of grass, and a black and brass fence surrounding all. The houses facing the square are red stone Dutch style with copper roofs, bottle windows and glass orangeries in the rear. The old night lanterns and polished stone carriage posts are still standing. Lennox occupied a floor and a quarter in Number 33.
You entered from the street into the kitchen, decorated with Cooper's cooking utensils and garish butcher charts he had charmed out of an influential meat-packer in Grosse Pointe. There was also a lunatic side-arm Oliver typewriter which he had charmed out of a Brooklyn druggist. It wrote in minims and other pharmaceutical symbols, and Cooper typed recipes on it. He once sent me one that read like Witch's Brew. Turned out to be Fruit Soup.
Past the kitchen, through a short hall lined with cupboards, you came into the living room. It was forty feet long with high windows looking out on a rear garden, and had evidently been enlarged from two smaller rooms because there were two fire-places on the right wall. On the left was the door to Cooper's bedroom, the door to the bath, and a narrow flight of steps leading up to the other quarter floor Lennox had. This was a second bedroom and study where Lennox slept and worked.
The living room contained Cooper's piano, his Hi-Fi system, his records and his two Siamese which hunted in pack. The mink-dyed skunk had conceived a passion for the bathtub and only came out grudgingly when the shower was turned on. Lennox had four or five hundred books in walnut breakfront cases and a pair of butterfly wing chairs to which he was devoted and over which he waged relentless war with the Siamese who well knew how to punish him when he offended them.
There was an Italian couch before one fireplace, which was kept practical, as we say in the business, and a sawbuck table that doubled as a bar against the other which contained an aquarium of adenoidal goldfish. The walls were decorated with smouldering photographs contributed by Cooper's sister who had studied with Berenice Abbott, but had not yet recovered from the childhood influence of a Doré Bible. There was a magnificent refectory table with six captain's chairs near the windows.
It was a warm, pleasant apartment since Cooper had moved in. His easy style took the curse off Jake's stiffness. In the past we used to dread going to Jake's parties. He was such a punctilious host that he invariably chilled the guests. But Cooper, who came from fresh-water society, had lived with protocol too long to be impressed by it. He kidded Lennox into relaxing and showing us flashes of his real self ... the Lennox that Cooper knew. I think everyone would have loved Jake if they could have seen him the way he showed himself to his friend.
But this Christmas night Lennox was not lovable; he was impossible. It was his custom to make his prayers in the shower, asking God to keep him austere, kindly, infallible and sophisticated. He never begged. He made his request as one son of the Marquis of Suffolk to another. Now, however, he was raging. He stood under the hot downpour with uplifted head, fists clenching and unclenching, furious with himself and God.
"What next?" he asked the shower-nozzle. "What else? Don't pull any punches. I won't whine or beg off. Let's have it all, and I'll show You!"
He cut off the water, wrapped himself in a towel, kicked open the bathroom door and stalked out into the living room. The mink-dyed skunk galloped past him back into the bathroom and stamped its paws angrily when it discovered the tub was wet. Cooper had a fire going in the practical fireplace, and a pot of coffee tactfully exposed on an end table alongside one of the wing chairs. It was half-past ten and the Siamese were enjoying their bedtime magic hour, skittering crazily up and down the apartment with crossed eyes and flattened ears.