The Heat of the Sun

past. But is it not incumbent upon us to prevent the wrongs of the future? Tell me, Mr
Sharpless’ – and here her voice became a purr – ‘do you think you might dedicate yourself to my cause?
    ‘This country of ours,’ she swept on, ‘lies in a parlous state. I know, I know – you look at the prosperity all around us, the automobiles thronging the streets, the
glittering towers that jut the sky, and think we’re on top of the world. The years since the war have been a remarkable time for America – and for the world, since America is in the
world. But has our ship a secure hand at the tiller? Coolidge rides triumphant on a following wind that seems likely never to end. But – swiftly enough – winds turn or slacken and fair
days turn to foul.
    ‘Meanwhile, from other lands come ominous tidings. They called the Great War the war to end war. I fear it is only the beginning of a new and more terrible chain of wars. We shan’t
escape them. Daddy’s world is dead. Foreign entanglements are our destiny. You see what I’m saying, don’t you? What is to become of this country? What is to become of the world?
The next election is crucial. The right man must win. But all too easily the right man may be swept aside. People will talk, Mr Sharpless – talk, I mean, unkindly. What they say, in the
scheme of things, may be trivia, the merest tittle-tattle. But tittle-tattle can do grave damage. We can’t stop them talking. Therefore, we must give them nothing to talk about.’
    Kate Pinkerton’s rhetorical skills impressed me, but as she warmed to her theme my attention slipped; her words became only sound, divorced from meaning, breaking on far shores of my
awareness. Abashed, I wondered what she could want from me.
    Her next words were disquieting. This ship of state could turn in an instant. ‘But I’m told you’re a poet.’
    She urged me to recite one of my efforts. For a moment, I almost believed she wanted to hear it.
    ‘Indulge an old woman, Mr Sharpless.’ That year, Kate Pinkerton would have been forty-five years old; her face was barely lined; yet, sitting before me in the soft light, she might
have been the embodiment of an ancient femininity, goddess of a vanished, immemorial race.
    An urge to use the bathroom came upon me. I would have liked to fling myself from the room, rush from the house, and not come back. Instead, I lowered my teacup and recited, almost in a
whisper:
    With sighings soft the summer comes
    To me again, bereft,
    Bowed down by mutability
    And all the love I’ve left;
    By fortune spurned, and desolate,
    What comfort can there be
    In hedgerows rich with marigolds
    For such a wretch as me?
    Kindly laughter tinkled over the teacups. My soul sank, but I had known it would. ‘Aren’t you a little young, Mr Sharpless, to be bowed down by mutability? And how much love have you left?’
    ‘I know it’s not good,’ I said, my face burning.
    What had I done? I had given myself away, delivered myself wholly into her power.
    ‘Not good? On the contrary,’ she said, ‘most amusing. But not, I dare say, in the contemporary idiom. You realize, Mr Sharpless’ – and again she smiled –
‘that my son’s nickname has more than one meaning? Trouble is trouble. And troubled too. Never forget that.’
    She leaned towards me, and my knee jumped as she touched it – briefly, lightly – with long, cool fingers. And at once I knew where she had been leading me and all that it entailed.
She was taking me into her service, reposing in me a fearful trust.
    ‘I’m glad Trouble has a friend,’ she said in a soft voice. ‘You’ll take good care of him, won’t you?’
    Wildly I gazed at her and struggled not to cry.
    Of course Trouble was troubled. I tried to see his fecklessness as charm, and such a view was possible – but only to restless eyes: to the boon companions of bathtub
gin, to the whores with hearts of gold, to the flapper girls who shrieked as he accelerated, long after midnight, down a dark upstate road. What risks he took! He drove like a man escaping demons.
He drank until he was comatose. He mingled with crooks and low life and revelled in their company. He neglected his work at his father’s office. Often the senator was absent in Washington,
and Trouble placated his father’s deputies with excuse after excuse: a sudden cold that confined him to bed; papers he must look up in the public library (his father, he said, had telephoned
him); electoral