A Season in Purgatory Read Free Page B

mansion of gray and brown stone in the Tudor style. If it was not the handsomest house in the city, it was certainly the largest, and its construction caused much comment at the time, not all of it favorable, as well as a steady stream of cars filled with sightseers hanging out the windows to stare at the vast structure. By then the Bradley name was on every tongue.
    “Who do these people think they are?” asked Piggy French, one of their new neighbors.
    “I now live next door to the butcher’s son,” said Leverett Somerset, a remark that was repeated over and over again at the country club, a club so exclusive that it had no other name than The Country Club. “There’s a capital
T
on the
The
,” Leverett Somerset always said when he discussed the club.
    Understanding the restrictions of the day, the Bradleys made no attempt at social intercourse with their polished neighbors. Nor did they mingle much with their own kind, having become separated from them by their immense wealth. But they found great pleasure in one another’s company. Loud screams of laughter and playful rivalry emanating from the Bradley swimming pool and the Bradley tennis court could be heard ringing through the air of the sedate neighborhood. “My word, don’t they make a lot of noise, those Bradleys,” Louise Somerset, Leverett’s wife, said on more than one occasion. The two families were never to understand each other. Louise Somerset was not sure whether it was an impertinence or an act of kindness when she received a Mass card from Grace Bradley following the death of her mother.
    Gerald was a stern disciplinarian to his children, demanding of them that they always be a credit to their Catholicbackground even while he prepared them for their infiltration into the Protestant world of private schools, dancing classes, seaside summers, country clubs, and Ivy League colleges. Grace, doing her part in the infiltration, contributed importantly to the symphony orchestra and attended every winter concert with one or more of her daughters, wearing a mink coat that Mrs. Somerset, her neighbor, told everyone was much, much too long. “She’s perfectly nice, Mrs. Bradley,” said Mrs. Somerset, after a symphony board meeting, “but I wish she wouldn’t wear gloves when she pours tea.”
    There was amazement in all quarters when Gerald Bradley was proposed for membership in The Country Club, the only Irish Catholic until then ever to be proposed. The Prindevilles, longtime members, were Catholic, too, but Helen Prindeville would be the first to tell you that they were French Catholic, which was, in her eyes, quite a different matter altogether. Piggy French, Buzzy Thrall, and Neddie Pawson, speaking for the majority of the membership, were prepared to blackball the proposal of Gerald Bradley. None of them took notice of Corky, the bartender, who overheard the contretemps while serving them drinks in the men’s locker room, and later repeated it word by word to the other employees, most of whom had grown up in Bog Meadow. Piggy French went so far as to call Gerald Bradley unclubbable.
    “He lacks the social graces,” agreed Buzzy Thrall.
    “Where do you suppose all that money comes from?” asked Neddie Pawson. “Are we sure it’s aboveboard? I mean, how can you make that much money in that short a time and have it all be legal? I mean, there won’t be fraud stories at some time in the future, will there, Leverett?”
    “No, no, no,” said Leverett Somerset impatiently. “Like him or not, and I don’t, thank you very much, the man isa financial genius. He should be in government. He should be dealing with the deficit, not trying to get into society.”
    “The only society he’s ever going to be in is the Holy Name Society,” said Buzzy Thrall, and they all laughed.
    “He keeps a mistress, I hear. Sally Steers, their interior decorator,” said Piggy French.
    “How do you know that?” demanded Leverett Somerset.
    “She went to