Free Rich Man, Poor Man by Irwin Shaw Page A

called The Farmer’s Inn?’ Boylan asked as he started the car.
    ‘I’ve heard of it,’ she said. It was a small hotel on a bluff above the river about fifteen miles farther on and supposed to be very expensive.
    ‘It’s not a bad little joint,’ Boylan said. ‘You can get a decent bottle of wine.’
    There was no more conversation because he drove very fast and the wind roared across the open car, making her squint against the pressure on her eyes and swirling her hair. The wartime speed limit was supposed to be only thirty-five miles an hour, to conserve gasoline, but of course a man like Mr Boylan didn’t have to worry about things like gasoline.
    From time to time, Boylan looked oyer at her and smiled a little. The smile was ironical, she felt, and had to do with the fact that she was sure he knew she had been lying about her reasons for being alone so far from town, waiting senselessly for a bus that wouldn’t arrive for another half-hour. He leaned over and opened the glove case and brought out a pair of dark Air Force glasses and handed them to her. ‘For your pretty, blue eyes,’ he shouted, over the wind. She put the glasses on and felt very dashing, like an actress in the movies.
    The Farmer’s Inn had been a relay house in the post-colonial days when travel between New York and upstate had been by stage coach. It was painted red with white trim and there was a large wagon wheel propped up on the lawn. It proclaimed the owner’s belief that Americans liked to dine in their past It could have been a hundred miles or a hundred years away from Port Philip.
    Gretchen combed her hair into some sort of order, using the rearview mirror. She was uncomfortable and conscious of Boylan watching her. ‘One of the nicest things a man can see in this life,’ he said, ‘is a pretty girl with her arms up, combing her hair. I suppose that’s why so many painters have painted it.’
    She was not used to talk like that from anv of the boys who
    had gone through high school with her or who hung around her desk at the office and she didn’t know whether she liked it or not. It seemed to invade her privacy, talk like that. She hoped she wasn’t going to blush any more that afternoon. She started to put on some lipstick, but he reached out and stopped her. ‘Don’t do that,’ he said authoritatively. ‘You’ve got enough on. More than enough. Come.’ He leaped out of the car, with surprising agility, she thought, for a man that age and came around and opened the door for her.
    Manners, she noted automatically. She followed him from the parking lot, where there were five or six other cars ranged under the trees, towards the entrance to the hotel. His brown shoes, well they weren’t really shoes (jodhpur boots, she was later to discover they were called), were highly shined, as usual. He was wearing a houndstooth tweed jacket, and grey flannel slacks, and a scarf at the throat of his soft wool shirt, instead of a tie. He’s not real, she thought, he’s out of a magazine. What am I doing with him?
    Beside him, she felt dowdy and clumsy in the short-sleeved navy-blue dress that she had taken so much care to choose that morning. She was sure he was already sorry he had stopped for her. But he held the door open for her and touched her elbow helpfully as she passed in front of him into the bar.
    There were two other couples in the bar, which was decorated like an eighteenth-century tap room, all dark oak and pewter mugs and plates. The two women were youngish and wore suede skirts with tight, flat jerseys and spoke in piercing, confident voices. Looking at them, Gretchen was conscious of the gaudiness of her own bosom and hunched over to minimise it The couples were seated at a low table at the other end of the room and Boylan guided Gretchen to the bar and helped her sit on one of the heavy, high, wooden stools. ‘This end,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Get away from those ladies. They make a music I can do