The Claimant Read online

  The matrimonial disaster is a fact on record in the parish registry of St Gilles and in black-and-white images (and some hand-tinted ones) in the Vanderbilt family archive. In the wedding photographs, the Comtesse Isabelle de la Vallière looks both manic and lustrous, like Saint Teresa caught in a moment of agonised ecstasy. Lawrence Gwynne Vanderbilt looks manic and hungry.

  Sacré bleu! That was a night to remember, Christophe le Jardinier told his daughter many years later. The entire village was there in the church and then we all followed the bride and groom back to the chateau for music and dancing. Most of us, and that included the priest, were already drunk. It was so soon, remember, after the Germans had been kicked out, that we hardly knew what we were elated about. We were practically insane with jubilation.

  After the bedding, we went on dancing and drinking in the courtyard and we could all hear the bride’s cries throughout the night. We weren’t sure if he was hog-tying her or keeping her in the seventh heaven of rapture. I knew her, you understand. We were children together. I knew her as well as two children in the countryside know each other and as well as a skilled gardener knows his employer. During the Occupation, she saved my life. I was fond of her. I felt protective. I wanted her to be happy. I hoped she was in sexual heaven, but according to the maids in the chateau, and to assorted village women, the groom had a bit of a taste for bondage. No one believes the married couple ever did it again. And that’s how that sad little boy got made.

  The chateau, as Lilith has since come to know, was modest as such estates are ranked in the French patrimoine, a fine country mansion on a mere twenty hectares in a village in the wine country south-west of Paris. It was indeed a royal consolation gift to a courtesan in the late seventeenth century.

  ‘Do you think she thanked her lucky stars that the king was fucking her?’ Lilith (aka Capucine) asked in Boston. ‘Or do you think she felt panic all the time? Your mother’s great-great-something-or-other, I mean. She had to know it would end.’

  ‘I’m willing to bet,’ McVie (aka Gwynne etcetera etcetera Vanderbilt) said, ‘that she wanted out anyway she could. I know that feeling.’ They did another odd thing then. They reached across the table and interlinked the fingers of their right hands, clasping so tightly that their knuckles turned white. With their left hands, a little awkwardly because it was not natural to them, they raised their glasses and made some sort of silent pledge with their eyes and then they drained their beer without pausing. It was the sort of thing that children who invent secret societies do and the sort of thing they do when they manage to sustain fantasy powers.

  ‘For Petit Christophe,’ McVie said, disengaging his right hand and crossing himself.

  Lilith drew a cross in a puddle of spilled beer. ‘For Ti-Christophe,’ she said.

  4.

  No court ruling is requiring me to keep to strict chronological order and certainly nobody’s memory works that way. Memory: now there’s an inexhaustibly interesting topic. It’s never linear, never, but holographic, a multi-directional detour-rich extremely faulty retrieval system. One day, inevitably and democratically, everyone’s hard drive crashes, but until it does my personal credo is this: follow every byway, every meander, every swerve.

  And so I return to Harvard Square in the sixties.

  What was I doing there?

  Well, rather like McVie/Vanderbilt/whomever – and not remotely like the gardener’s daughter – I was a runaway from elite prep schools in Massachusetts, from expectations that weighed like a lead jacket on my shoulders. I often felt that rogue genes might have intruded (and, quite frankly, what do I know of my mother’s erotic detours?), though the official genes protected me for years. I was first sent to Dryden Academy and ran away and then got kicked out. Dryden Academy! Miles from nowhere in western Massachusetts. Runaways were not uncommon. Boys would hitch rides with the local farmers down to Springfield and to the Mass Pike and then take a Greyhound bus into Boston. The local farmers were sympathetic and helpful, seeing our defections as evidence of character and genuine worth. ‘Sick of all those spoiled rich kids, huh? Want a little fun with some girls?’ My time there, you understand, was three decades before Dryden went co-ed. I lasted almost two years, on and off.

  After my expulsion, I was diplomatically transferred to other elite pastoral campuses, scraped through by parental intervention, got into Yale, flunked out through almost total non-attendance of classes, was finagled into West Point and finagled out again just in time before being expelled. My father made the requisite reparations to land me a job. (I did have astronomical IQ scores on my side.) My father and my grandfather and my great-grandfather and my great-great-whatevers before that were military officers and heroes (the Revolutionary Army, the Confederate Army, the US Army) so naturally I joined the marches against the Vietnam war. I was the perfect double agent, an insider/outsider with high analytical skills. I was already keeping an eye on subversives, but also indulging my private protest against excessive ancestral control.

  Hey, hey, LBJ, I chanted as I marched. How many kids did you kill today?

  You want to know something?

  It’s one of the few things that I truly regret, one of the things that gives me nightmares. Well, I’m dabbling in purple ink there. Nothing gives me nightmares, but some things do cause me unease and that is one of them. I don’t mean that I’ve changed my mind about Vietnam (we did it badly, very badly, but we had to do it, so I believed then and now). I do mean that I’ve changed my mind about Johnson. He was a vulgar son-of-a-bitch but he knew what would work and what wouldn’t and he knew how to get Congress to move. Oh, our current dysfunctional gridlocked kingdom for a horse’s ass like Johnson!

  Also, he was a fellow Southerner.

  Also (setting aside the coarse language), he reminds me of my father who died before I was able to ask forgiveness and make peace.

  I know what you’re thinking.

  I know you’re thinking I’m trying to whitewash myself, to show that I’m politically virtuous in spite of being without any discernible morality when it comes to accountability, personal or financial or political. Doesn’t that put me in the Robin Hood camp? God and country first; after that, to fleece a few of the mega-rich and give to the poor is fair game.

  Not, I am obliged to confess, that I’ve given much to the poor (though I’ve certainly enjoyed fleecing the rich).

  And I will admit there was the huge added pleasure of knowing that the Civil Rights Act – which no one but Johnson could have got through Congress – enraged most of my male relatives and doubtless made earlier generations turn in their graves. I rather think they earned an afterlife of turning on a barbeque spit.

  But I digress.

  Odd what a skittering thing memory is, the way it branches and swerves like the Mississippi splaying out across its flood plain, overtopping the levees, a natural phenomenon that made my ancestors rich (cotton-rich, slave-rich), a capillary network that can leak into hollows and coves that time forgot.

  There’s this march that comes back to me, hyper-realistic in detail. We were milling about in July 1968, hundreds of us, on Cambridge Common, where George Washington assembled his troops. ‘In 1775,’ I explained to Lilith, who seemed to know very little of American history. ‘You know. Concord. The shot heard round the world, General Gage, all that.’

  ‘No,’ she said vaguely. ‘I’ve got a lot of gaps to fill in. Have you seen McVie?’

  Of course I’d taken care of McVie. I wanted him out of the way. I had arranged it.

  ‘He was going to meet me here,’ she said.

  ‘I believe he’s got a paper due,’ I said.

  ‘We’ve all got papers due, but that’s not the point.’

  ‘He’s decided to stay and work on it in Widener.’

  ‘What? I don’t believe you.’

  ‘That’s what he told me.’

  ‘Fucking aristocrat.’

  Bodies were buffeting us, politicians-to-be were shouting through mega
phones. We were all being herded along Massachusetts Avenue towards the bridge across the Charles and then on to Fenway Park. I linked my arm through hers. Her hair smelled of something earthy, like anise or cloves.

  I took a photograph of her. I was taking many photographs of the crowd.

  ‘We really can change the world,’ she said.

  ‘How do you know McVie?’ I asked.

  She frowned at me. ‘Same way as you.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s true. You act as though you already knew each other.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘That. No. That’s just … it’s a kind of game that we play.’

  ‘You were children together in France.’

  ‘McVie is definitely not French,’ she said.

  ‘Why did you call him an aristocrat?’

  ‘Don’t you think he gives himself airs? Are you going to vote for McCarthy?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Are you?’

  ‘I can’t vote,’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I have a Green Card. I’m not a citizen yet.’

  ‘So you aren’t American.’

  ‘My parents are American. It’s complicated. War baby, you know? My parents were trapped in occupied France and I grew up there.’

  ‘Until when?’

  ‘Until I came as a student to NYU. Art history degree, which got me the internship here.’

  ‘So. American parents. That explains why your English is so good. You don’t have any accent at all.’

  ‘I don’t have an accent in French either.’

  ‘Speaking of which, don’t you think there’s something odd about McVie’s accent?’

  ‘Is there?’ she asked. ‘I’m not good on American regional variations. He’s Boston Irish.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said.

  She frowned. ‘The McVies have been in Boston since the potato famine in Ireland.’

  ‘Hmm,’ I said, noncommittal. ‘Perhaps I can help speed up your swearing-in as a citizen.’

  ‘How could you help me?’

  ‘My family has plenty of clout and my father can pull strings all over the place, including in Washington. It’s who you know that counts.’

  ‘I’ll keep that in mind.’

  I put my arm around her shoulders. ‘Let’s discuss this after the demonstration,’ I said.

  Fenway Park was carnivalesque. While Pete Seeger was singing, we kissed. ‘You want to come back to my apartment?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, I’m sort of in a relationship,’ she said. ‘At least, I think I am. I hope I am.’

  ‘Sounds as though he isn’t too interested.’

  ‘You could be right,’ she sighed, ‘but that doesn’t mean I’m disengaged.’

  ‘Next week,’ I said, ‘there’s a protest planned for New York, a huge sit-in in Central Park, and I’m driving down. You want to come with me?’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’ Then she said: ‘I have family in New York. Well, almost family. And other friends from France who are as close to family as you can get. I haven’t seen them for two months and I miss them. I’d love to spend time with them. Would that be okay with you?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘We could stay overnight if you like.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Yes. Okay. That would be great.’

  I had this thing about McVie in my head. It was like a name that you can’t quite remember. It was like waking from a dream that you know was thick with meaning and of crucial significance, but it’s gone. All you can see is the dusty cobweb it left behind.

  In my apartment, I jotted down notes about the demonstration. I listed names, students and faculty I recognised, conversations engaged in, other conversations overheard. I forwarded this information to assorted authorities. They were paying me rather well.

  I had my rolls of film developed and sent those on too, though I kept the ones of Lilith for myself. This was mostly selfish, partly altruistic. I didn’t want her locked into J. Edgar Hoover’s files, didn’t want to share her with all those prurient prying eyes.

  And then I sat in the dark for hours with my fingers pressed against my temples until it came to me, quite suddenly, in the way such things will rocket up from bottomless places, leaping like phosphorescent fish from black water. I pulled out desk drawers in a state of manic excitement. I rifled through bookshelves and wicker baskets chock-full of yearbooks and high-school magazines.

  I located them: the magazines from the miserable years I spent at Dryden. I turned page after page until I found him. Freshman. Latin club, medieval history club, theatre, chess club, cross-country. Gwynne Vanderbilt, third from left, front row, undersized loner from the year behind me with that sombre brainy look that never fails to trigger an intense allergic reaction in me. We overlapped by a mere three semesters and the closest contact we ever had was from being assigned to the same dining table for two weeks before I bailed out. We were ten to a table and I never sat next to him but I have a certain kind of instinct for prey. He had a reputation for being intimidating – socially and intellectually – but I detected at once that it was a cover-up for a big black hole of panic. Mentally I put him on my usable list but I’d brushed the dust of Dryden from my sandals long before I got around to milking him.

  Theatre club? That wasn’t surprising. I knew from the first moment that he was a mask with no one behind it. On the club pages, in the photograph spreads, there he was on stage in an Oscar Wilde play. Vanderbilt a brilliant mimic, the caption read. Can do Scottish, Irish, French-English, Italian-English, the latter two especially hilarious. In short, he can pull any accent out of the hat.

  But cross-country? How could he possibly have made that team? Even back then, in spite of jellyfish nothingness, there must have been something stubborn and persistent – or a sense of entitlement? – about him. He was small. He looked as though a footballer could have snapped his frail little ribcage in two. He must surely have been the runt of the litter on the track team.

  This recognition on my part wouldn’t count as proof in a court of law. If I’d passed the magazine around at a demo and pointed out Vanderbilt, probably less than twenty percent would say: Hey, that’s McVie. Or: I think that’s Vanderbilt. I knew him at Dryden. Or: I think he was my tutor in grad school. I think his name was McVie.

  Whatever they might have said, I knew.

  There was something about the haunted eyes and the solemnity, a boy with the weight of the world on his limp but ancestrally entitled shoulders.

  Nailed you! I thought. You fake Boston-Irish leprechaun. But who or what are you running from? And what un-American activities are you covering up?

  Nobody goes to that sort of hassle (name change, fake accent, fake past) for nothing. Or for innocent reasons. I filed my report and I also alerted the FBI.

  I know the trouble it had cost my father and my employers to provide my alternate ID: new driver’s licence, new Social Security number, alternative transcripts in my new and temporary name. So who was doing all this for McVie? I needed to see his current driver’s licence. I needed to track things back from there. I needed to send this information on.

  Lilith was the best place to start. And who, after all, was she? How could she be French if she had American parents? I needed to see her driver’s licence too.

  ‘Can you do me a favour?’ I asked her, over coffee in Harvard Square.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘For reasons too ridiculous to explain, my car’s in dock out in Waltham and I’m supposed to pick it up this afternoon but I’ve got a seminar presentation due. Big favour. Could you and McVie pick up the car for me? If you drove out together, one of you could drive my car back. I’d just need to make photocopies of your driver’s licences. Insurance company requirement.’

  ‘Neither of us has a car. We use the subway.’

  ‘Oh. Well, in that case I’ll pay for the taxi to get you to Waltham. But I’ll still need to see your driver’s licence.’

  ‘Can’t do, I
’m afraid,’ Lilith said. ‘I don’t have a driver’s licence.’

  ‘You don’t have a driver’s licence? Come on! What kind of person over the age of eighteen in this country doesn’t have a driver’s licence?’

  ‘Anyone who lives in Manhattan or went to college there.’

  ‘What about McVie?’

  ‘He doesn’t have one either. If you’re a student and you live in Boston, why would you want to have a car?’

  Of course it was true. It cost more to park in Harvard Square than to live there, the running joke went. And where could you want to go that didn’t have a subway stop?

  I filed a report. Cannot find documentation or SSN for current alias of Patrick McVie, but have reason to believe he is actually Gwynne Patrice Vanderbilt, offshoot of the New York upper-crust clan. Good at languages, good mimic, currently posing as Boston Irish. Anti-war demonstrator, possible links to IRA. Under suspicion for subversive activity.

  I did not mention Lilith Jardine.

  5.

  The jury was closeted for one week but the verdict made instant headline news: JURY FINDS VANDERBILT CLAIMANT A FRAUD. Additional details – such as when sentencing would be pronounced, and who would be sentenced and how – were difficult to come by. The editors of print newspapers, who had been lamenting declining revenue and readers, went into overdrive. Money was liberally dispensed to track down every existing descendant of the Vanderbilt family (of which there turned out to be hundreds); to contact and interrogate every juror; to fly journalists to France and Australia.

  Just three days after the jury’s verdict there was a fresh news alert that sent talkback radio and the tabloids into a swoon. This was the lead: Vanderbilt claimant is actually Christophe Jardinier, village butcher in France, believed murdered decades ago but possibly living in Australia.

  One day later came yet another Stop Press announcement: Vanderbilt claimant may be murderer of apprentice butcher in France. And then the embellished versions went viral on talkback radio and in tabloid headlines and at every bus stop and water cooler in the country.