Free The Heat of the Sun by David Rain

back to me above the clamour: ‘Come to tea one afternoon! At Mama’s. She likes to meet my
friends.’
    Trouble had sent me an address in Gramercy Park. The sky gleamed softly there, a yellowish haze above barren trees, as I stood fearfully before great double doors. Brass
glowed against black. Gas, like a captive star, flared in a cage above my head. I stepped into the hall, and, as the butler helped me out of my coat, my eyes darted, almost suspiciously, over the
chequerboard floor, the gesturing palm fronds, the broad red-carpeted staircase cascading around mahogany bends of banister. Teacups tinkled in a chamber close by.
    When we meet those who are to be important in our lives, first impressions often carry no clue of what will come. With each of the Pinkertons, on the contrary, I recognized at once that
something fundamental, an epoch in my life, had begun. Kate Pinkerton was not a large woman, but as she presided over the tea things, stiff-backed beneath metallic heapings of hair, she had about
her something as immemorial as the grand house that enclosed her like a shell. She was the daughter of a great political family. A Manville had been Attorney General under James K. Polk; Secretary
of War under Ulysses S. Grant; Secretary of State under Grover Cleveland.
    Graciously, barely moving, Kate Pinkerton inclined her head towards me. Her gown, of a green so dark it was almost black, was a fussy, Edwardian affair of trailing skirts, lacy ruffs and a
bodice upholstered in ridged, scalloped patterns. Fixed at her neck was a dark brooch that flashed a reddish gleam.
    To my embarrassment, I had been the last to arrive. Trouble, immaculate as ever, sat close to his mother’s sofa in a spindly Georgian chair. Catching my eye, he winked at me and smirked.
Four others took tea with us that afternoon: an ancient lady with a wattled neck, who represented a charity for unwed mothers; a little balding gentleman from the Audubon Society, who pecked his
teacake like one of the less compelling common or garden birds and straightened, too often, the creases of his trousers; an artistic lady, whose views on a new production of Manon Lescaut would be sought with assiduity by her hostess; and a shabby, sack-like old fellow who was, I learned, the professor who had endeavoured to show Trouble the art treasures of Europe. As I took my
place the professor was speaking in a low, rumbling baritone about some dreary academic controversy at Columbia. I could not envy Trouble such a companion.
    I was sitting uncertainly, resenting the frail tea things, when Kate Pinkerton asked me, ‘You’re a college man, Mr... Sharpless ?’ She pronounced my name with a curious
precision, as if she thought it odd.
    Trouble leaped in: ‘Woodley’s frightfully clever, Mama. He’s a writer. He’ll win the Pulitzer one day, mark my words.’
    The great lady eyed me appraisingly. ‘I trust you shall be a good influence on Trouble. You know we call him Trouble? Our little jest.’ She went on, ‘I’m afraid the poor
boy’s not forgiven us for summoning him back from the Old World.’
    ‘Might he not resent such barbarism?’ The professor, it seemed, was fond of being contrary. ‘Why, we should have chirruped our way across the world like cicadas, restlessly in
quest of new aesthetic pleasures. But lo! Shades of the prison-house close upon the growing boy.’
    Kate Pinkerton said, ‘You refer, I take it, to my husband’s office?’
    Trouble twisted his mouth as I learned of his new engagement: a position on the senator’s staff. This, I supposed, like the ranch in Montana, represented an attempt to tame the feckless
son; yet each time Kate Pinkerton looked at him, her breast swelled and something softened in her eyes.
    Talk turned to the Administration of President Coolidge. Kate Pinkerton held forth without interruption, and though I understood little, I did not repine; I wanted not so much to listen to her
as to bathe, indeed