Dinner was all of Harry’s favorite foods: strip steak, artichokes, skinny French fries, and chocolate mousse. Drinks were ginger beer shandies and Brunello. The three older boys were allowed to have wine that night. Harry, at eighteen, was legal in New York; he could drink as much as he wanted. Will and Sam, weighing over 130 pounds, were each given a glass. “I want you to learn to drink before you go to university,” Rupert had said to the boys. He had spent a good deal of time at Cambridge snockered, a way of fitting in. “Was it worse at Cambridge,” he had asked himself, “to be a Jew, the son of a butcher, or a foundling?”
At Longleat, Rupert had come up with a workable response to inquiries into his origins. He would say that he’d been orphaned as an infant and raised as the ward of the Reverend Henry Falkes, St. Pancras Church, Chichester. The shared name was reassuring to his interrogators, and Rupert regularly offered up silent thanks to the reverend for giving him his last name. The other orphans who’d arrived storklike at St. Pancras had last names from Dickens. “True,” Rupert said. “I’m not pulling your leg.” His infant schoolmates included a Copperfield, a Nickleby, a Dombey, a Harmon, a Jaggers, a Carstone, and a Trotwood. Reverend Falkes gave them the names of worthy if flawed characters, a kind of literary blessing on their heads. He liked naming and took it seriously; it was, after all, the first task God set Adam. He told Rupert his only regret was wasting Summerson on a small pockmarked bully. “I should have called him Murdstone.”
Rupert never asked the reverend why he alone had his last name. He feared he would appear presumptuous or, worse, Heepish; he suspected Reverend Falkes would be acutely embarrassed. From his seat on the sidelines, Rupert observed that embarrassment or, more accurately, the avoidance of embarrassment was the chief moderator of English social arrangements among the upper middle classes. So many of the Englishmen he knew were embarrassed by the smallest things: wearing the wrong pair of shoes (brown in town instead of black), saying the wrong word (“wealthy” instead of “rich”), playing the wrong game (football instead of rugby). Rudeness was the antidote, injected into the conversation at the merest hint of encroaching embarrassment.
America cured Rupert of the last vestiges of embarrassment; it became superfluous. As far as he could tell, Americans were embarrassed only by public nakedness, a situation he felt he could easily avoid. His rudeness adapted to the New World, propagating, kudzu-like, into an instrument against stupidity, carelessness, laziness, and boredom, especially boredom. One of the other reasons Rupert married Eleanor was that she didn’t prattle. He’d found that rare in a girl as beautiful as she, used to attention and admiration. His mother-in-law had been beautiful, he was told, which helped him understand his father-in-law, smote by forget-me-not blue eyes.
Dinner was roisterous on Harry’s last night. He was excited and nervous for himself. He couldn’t eat; he drank. His brothers were excited and nervous for him. They ate enormous amounts.
“It’s Harry’s last meal,” Will said. Harry grinned like the Cheshire Cat and drew his index finger slit-like across his throat. Everyone laughed, except Sam.
Sam shook his head. “No, no,” he said, his voice cracking, his eyes filling with tears. “This is serious. This is the end of normal life.” Silence fell on the table.
At that moment, Harry decided that his brothers would follow him to Princeton. Normal life would continue, only shifting its center of gravity seasonally, between the Hotel des Artistes and Nassau Hall.
“I can’t believe in ten years, you’ll all be gone. Pfffft,” Eleanor said. She looked at Rupert. “Short of a cricket side, but not a bad lot.”
“No duffers,” he said softly. She nodded.
“I should play taps, shouldn’t I?” Jack said. He went to get his trumpet.
“Just a minute,” Harry said. He poured himself another glass of wine. “To Mom and Dad.”
“Hear, hear,” the others replied.
Eleanor cleared her throat. Rupert covered her hand with his own. From the far end of the apartment, they heard the first melancholy notes of the bugle call. They looked at each other, then looked away, too happy to speak.
—
Rupert lingered for four months, three more than anyone expected. His doctors said it must have been the last powerful chemo combination and wanted to write him up. Eleanor wondered at their notion of success. He’d been dying the whole time. He died on a Saturday morning in April. The floor nurse called Eleanor at seven a.m. to say the end was near. Eleanor called all the boys. Harry and Sam went to the hospital with her. Eleanor said to Rupert, “I’m here. It’s all right.” Harry held his hand. Sam kissed his forehead. He died ten minutes later. Pulled under by a wave of grief, Eleanor wept.
Rupert did not die on the front page of the Times, a private wish, but he was given a two-column obituary inside with a photo. He’d been a prominent lawyer and a good one, and he’d given away a lot of money to good causes. The death notice Eleanor submitted to run for a week was characteristically succinct. No lovings, no beloveds.
Rupert Falkes. Born February 2, 1934, Chichester, England, died April 14, 2000, New York, NY, of cancer. Graduate of the Prebendal School, Longleat College, Cambridge University, and Yale Law School. Senior Partner, Maynard, Tandy & Jordan. Trustee, Trinity School. Corporation Member, Yale University. Board Member, New York Public Library. Survived by his wife, Eleanor Deering Phipps; his sons, Henry, William, Samuel, John, and Thomas Falkes; their wives and partners, Lea Abrams, Frances Gore, Andrew Lanahan, Katherine Ellway, and Caroline Steinway; and two granddaughters, Alice and Elizabeth Falkes. Funeral Friday, April 18, 11 a.m., St. Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue at 53rd Street. No flowers. Donations in his name may be made to the Soup Kitchen, Holy Apostles Church.
—
“I see you’ve taken back your maiden name,” Harry commented when he read the notice. “Inspired by my daughters-in-law,” Eleanor said. “I’m giving it a trial. I always disliked the awkward alliteration of Eleanor Phipps Falkes. Like a rude limerick.” Harry stared at her. “We’re all Phipps Falkes,” he said. “Yes,” she said.