Addled

by JoeAnn Hart

Genres: Family Life; Humor & Satire; Sports

Synopsis

Eden Rock Country Club is a grand New England institution, a lush haven of leisure and cocktails, where gossip and intrigue lurk discreetly behind a veil of old-world propriety. But one Fourth of July, a flock of geese descends on the club's manicured lawns; never fond of outsiders, the Eden Rock denizens find these new guests distinctly unwelcome. When Charles Lambert, a bond trader with a strong portfolio but a weak golf game, accidentally kills a goose with a wayward drive, he sets in motion a series of events that will leave the club and its members changed forever. His wife, Madeline, must face the mutterings of other members about the state of her marriage -- and his sanity. Meanwhile, their daughter, an animal rights activist, mounts a quixotic campaign to make the club go vegan, much to the annoyance of Vita, a talented, obsessive chef who has her own plans for the geese. A deftly observed social comedy, Addled is a rich and riotous story of old money, new ideas, and the power of passion to disrupt even the most orderly of worlds.

Release date: May 15, 2007

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 337

Sample

Chapter One

The Angle of Approach

IT WAS a perfect lie. Charles Lambert handled his 3-iron as reverently as a divining rod, its finely calibrated balance sending a golden hum to his brain. The fairway lay open at his feet, presenting no obstacles between him and Plateau, the elevated green of Hole #14—200 yards away, still well within his capabilities. Still. Up at the club-house, he heard fabric slap and cables clank as Old Glory fought the morning breeze, and he made a mental calculation to correct for the wind. If only he could freeze it all, these precious moments before the club made contact with the ball, when anything was possible.

He could even win. He was playing a decent game in spite of not getting out on the course nearly enough that spring. Freedom at the office had been sorely curtailed, what with one corporate scandal and SEC investigation after another. Here it was, the Fourth of July weekend, and he wasn’t even tan yet—not naturally so, at any rate. He’d had to borrow bronzing gel from Madeline’s bag of tricks for these ambered arms, making him feel like the vigorous youth he was not so long ago. Indeed, his muscles were still firm, his wrists supple and pronated, his hands—properly V-clasped firmly around the staff—as strong as ever. In a nod to authenticity, he’d even kept the bronzer off his left hand where a golf glove would have blocked the sun.

He looked down at the dimpled ball, then back up at the broad fairway. To the right, the wall of vegetation that straddled his backyard threw a purple shadow on the course. When he was a boy, he used to play over there, knocking acorns around with a stick—looking over the gate. How proud he was the first time his father brought him along for a game. He was no taller than a golf bag and yet he’d felt like one of the men, a hunter of balls, a conquering hero. But hunters and heroes did not, as a rule, wear bronzing gel, did they? When had vanity replaced his old self-assurance, his self-mastery—his self? Why was it that when his father turned silver at the temples he’d been called distinguished, but when his own chestnut hair lost its depth he was simply growing old? It wasn’t fair to change the rules like that. Slings of flesh—jowls—had begun to round off his chin, once so pointed and cleft. His entire infrastructure was aging. After the game, he had to go see his dentist about a cracked tooth.

He tried to focus, reaching back to a lifetime of lessons: straight arm, bent knee, head down, eye on the ball. Or inner eye on the ball, as Steeve from the Buddha Ball Clinic would say—the double e’s in his name like hooded eyes—enigmatically adding that “the hole and the ball have been one throughout eternity.” If that were the case, Charles sniffed, then what was the point of going through the motions? And “be the ball” was nothing more than what Chevy Chase said in Caddyshack, a movie Steeve claimed never to have seen. What sort of golf pro was that?

But the three days and twelve hundred dollars were not entirely wasted. He did grasp the concept about forging a connection between hand, mind, and club, and the importance of keeping the head still—mentally, not just physically—to make room for abundance in his shot. But stillness eluded him. Steeve told him that it could not be sought, and the best he could do was prepare himself to receive it.

“How do I do that?” Charles had asked.

“You must find your own path,” Steeve had said, with what Charles felt was a spiritual smirk. “No one can tell you. Be natural. Let it go to let it in.”

“Of what?” Charles had been exasperated. “What do I let go of?”

“Striving. Trying so hard.” Steeve had stroked his severely clipped beard and studied Charles. “And if you can’t let go, try loosening your grip.”

Finally, some decent golf advice.

Charles waggled his club and breathed in deeply as he relaxed his hands, but then a chunk of air lodged at the base of his throat. How had a moment of peace degenerated so quickly into another opportunity for anxiety? He shifted his weight to his left foot and rotated his shoulders. At least he was tall—not shrinking yet!—and that gave him an edge. Even an inch or two made a difference in being able to assess the lay of the land. He could see, off in the distance, that old duffer Howie Amory disappear into the dogleg of #16, and over there, a stately parade of Canada geese was marching up from Oxbow Lake. The birds acted like they owned the place, posing in their formal attitudes, luxuriously plucking at the green turf. If they could hold a club with those feathered limbs, they’d be better than he was by the end of the summer. It used to be his fortunes that were on the rise; now it was his handicap. But a man’s game only improved in proportion to the time available to work on it, and since his fiftieth birthday he’d felt he had no time at all.

He readjusted his grip and felt the scorecard in his pocket dig into his groin. He could sense his partners shifting uneasily as they ran out of small talk, waiting for him to take his shot. Gregg, Neddy, and Andrew, all friends and colleagues, had only a two-minute reserve of conversation, even among themselves. That is, unless they were involved in some sport so they wouldn’t have to look at one another, but only look at the ball, and discuss the ball, what the ball did, why it did it, and what could be done to either encourage it or keep it from doing it again. It could be a golf ball on Saturday morning, or it could be a baseball tuned in to the radio in an air-conditioned Land Rover. It could be a football on a home-theater screen as they fended off another sleety New England winter on tufted-leather sofas. They could even be entertained by a Day-Glo tennis ball soaring over the heads of their wives in mixed doubles. The ball made them happy, but it had to keep moving. It made them nervous when it stopped for too long, foreshadowing the inevitable day when it—and they—would stop moving altogether.

Charles wrapped himself in a tight cocoon of concentration as he raised his club high, determined not to hesitate at the apex, hesitated anyway, and swung. The contact reverberated through his body as if he were sending a piece of himself into the universe, soaring. Up and up—the small white voyager sailed through the blue sky as through a heavenly sea, and his mind’s eye followed along, looking at the course from high above, down at the giant amoebas of putting greens, the luxurious tops of trees, the reflective gaze of water hazards, all fitting together like pieces of a master puzzle. Then the ball—and the vision—began to fall from flight, plunging down, and down again, until the pieces broke apart. Neddy gasped in an asthmatic wheeze, simultaneous with the distant squa-a-ak. A grazing Canada goose fell over in a violent gesture, then went still.

The golfers, too shocked to laugh, stared at the inert body in the distance and waited to see if maybe it wouldn’t decide to get up and shake off the whole affair. When they realized that such was not going to be the case, they walked over in trepidation, stepping over the divot.

Charles got there first and squatted by the goose spread in supplication on the flawless grass. He was about to touch it, until Andrew, slight and sandy, put his hand over his mouth and shook his head. Holding his 3-iron like a harpoon, Charles prodded the feathered body until it rolled over, causing the head to settle at an unnatural angle. Blood appeared at its nostrils.

“How disgusting,” said Andrew, scrunching up his face, an act that made his Adam’s apple protrude even more.

“Well done, Charles,” said Neddy, laughing. He lowered his fireplug of a body and tugged at a wing feather. “What a pity hunting season doesn’t open for another six months.”

Gregg, a massive hulk of a human, bald and bubble-gum pink, got his best club out of his bag: The USGA’s Rules of Golf. “You can’t play the game without knowing the rules,” he always said. He began to pace, digging his cleats into the turf with every lumbering step as he turned the pages, searching for an answer. Andrew, abnormally upright by orders of his doctor and chiropractor, who catered to his tight, flinching spine, stepped away from the body and pulled a cell phone out of his pants pocket. Phones were forbidden on the course, but then again, as he often pointed out, so was foul language. And besides, he kept the phone on vibrate and only made outgoing calls when he had to. He dialed the grounds crew to clear away the mess.

Charles collapsed to a one-legged kneel, using his club as a staff to balance himself. He pressed his lips together and tasted blood where his cracked tooth had rubbed at his inner flesh, and he stared at the bird. The feathers of one wing were spread open like a fan, the tip pointing up, beckoning him. The bleakness and terrible reality of existence seeped into his very being, all on this fine blue day, played upon this smooth green grass. He’d been aiming for the other side of the fairway altogether. How was one to go on with the game?

“Is there a penalty?” asked Gregg, stabbing a finger in his book. “What do I look under?”

“Augury,” croaked Charles.

“There’s nothing here about that.” Gregg paced in wider and wider circles with every rotation, not looking up from the Rules. “Is a goose a natural obstruction or an outside agent?”

“Augury?” Neddy snorted, then stood with a groan, straightening the crease of his butter-yellow pants. “Charles, we should never have let you go to that wacky clinic this winter. Soon you’ll be playing golf and buying bonds by examining the entrails of birds.”

“Entrails!” Andrew turned his back to the men and shouted into the phone, his hand over one ear. “You’d better hurry.”

Charles stood up with great effort, trembling at the joints. “I can’t say we wouldn’t all do any better if we did.” He wiped his forehead with his arm, smudging his skin-deep glow, and looked up in time to see a lone crow sweep over them to inspect the carnage.

Chapter Two

The Lay of the Land

GERARD WILTON traced the grain of his polished mahogany desk with the tip of his finger as he gazed out his picture window at the golf course, as plush and curvaceous as a green velvet pillow. Since 1882, Eden Rock managers had overseen the smooth running of the Club from this very desk, and he was proud to be part of that noble line, heir to this exceptional view. It was a land of no extremes, just how he—and he felt he could speak for the members in this regard—preferred life in general: the present constant and content, with the future leisurely coasting ahead from one tee to the next.

The in-house phone trilled and the kitchen indicator light flashed red. That would be his chef, Vita, short-tempered, self-assured, and so indecently sensual that if the kitchen weren’t already in the basement, he would have to put it there, such were the sounds she made when she tasted her own cooking. But she would not be in the throes of ecstasy now. He’d left a memo on her desk last night about iceberg lettuce. Food at the Club was as recreational as the golf, so it had to be both interesting and fashionable. It was unfortunate for Vita that her boyfriend / produce supplier had just dumped her for another chef, but the members could not go to their outside worlds with head lettuce on their breath because of it. No, indeed.

He picked up the receiver with resolve, then quickly held it away from his ear. Vita was threatening some perverse violence with canned fruit cocktail. But he knew she was just letting off steam. She would never keep such an abomination in her kitchen, and she was, underneath it all, self-controlled in the way that people who work with knives generally are.

When the screaming died down, Gerard spoke to her with excessive, professional calm. “Vita, listen to reason. You don’t have to buy mesclun from your old boyfriend”—and he correctly put the emphasis on the clun—“but you do have to find someone else, soon. The membership can’t eat fast-food filler just because the chef is no longer bedding the greengrocer.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, with a cracked voice and a sniffle.

“You know exactly what I’m saying,” Gerard said. “Don’t rattle the members.”

One of the reasons Gerard had hired Vita when he arrived on the scene three years ago—aside from the fact that the previous cook had specialized in warm gray meat—was that despite her Colombian heritage, Vita had a great unpretentious American style. She favored neither the chilies and spices of her people nor the experimental puddles of yellow and purple sauces of her peers. She made halibut poached with fennel, roast lamb with rosemary polenta, and skewers of shrimp and mango. Food that was different but not unfamiliar. The members, conservative in all things, were suspicious of strange ingredients, but once they were conditioned to something, like mesclun, they could not be turned back easily. They could, in fact, be quite rigid.

“There’s nothing low-life about head lettuce, Gerard.” As Vita spoke into the kitchen phone, she absently fondled a bowl of fuzzy kiwis on the stainless-steel counter in front of her. “Those old Wasps prefer it. With a little Thousand Island dressing, it brings them right back to Mother’s dear old cook. As for the others, it’s retro. A crescent of iceberg juxtaposed with a few truffle shavings puts both truffles and iceberg in a whole new context.”

“The members don’t think food, Vita—they eat food. Don’t cook over their heads.”

“And as far as the greengrocer goes, my private life is my business. It’s a wonder I can still have one with the hours I put into this gastro hell. I just happen to think that Utah Riley is unreliable, that’s all.” Her voice cracked again as she crushed two kiwis in her fist until juice ran green on the counter. “Everything he has is wilted and he can’t deliver.”

“I have a few suggestions of whom to call,” Gerard said, rifling through some papers on his desk. “I think, for efficiency’s sake, instead of using a dozen specialty suppliers, it’s time to go to one of the big restaurant companies where we can get everything from toilet paper to tomatoes in one neat order.”

“Gerard!” Vita flung the mangled kiwis into the trash. “How can you say such a thing? Good food is more about shopping than cooking. Not everyone knows where to find the perfect radish or the plumpest chicken—some people wouldn’t know a ripe avocado if they stepped in it. The only food you’re an expert on is the pickle you keep up. . .”

“Listen, Vita, we’ll talk about this later. But in the meantime, if a farmer comes to the back door and wants to show you his zucchini, just say no. No, thank you. Do something other than iceberg for tonight, and you’d better hurry before Mr. Quilpe gets wind of this. He’ll have us paying for air shipments of baby weeds from the South of France.”

“The Food Committee is full of beans,” she muttered, using her apron to wipe the pulp off her hands.

Gerard made some comforting murmur of “there, there” and got off the phone. Romance always came to this. His own love life, such as it was, was played far from the home field. He never brought girlfriends to the Club. It was important that the female members believed he was available, even though he had never acted on a single come-on. Seductive behavior made everyone happy. Always feeling wanted, never being had.

He returned to contemplating the landscape, which never failed to provide him with a pleasant perspective, much as it surely had for Jonathan M. Curtis, of Curtis Mills, who in 1881 had acquired a taste for pastoral scenes on a tour of the English countryside. In what was then a rural area west of Boston, he had a manor house built of stucco and timber, with seven thatched cottages out back for staff, and a dozen imported Devonshire sheep to keep the lawns trim. Curtis died soon thereafter in a hunting accident, when his own gamekeeper, also imported, mistook him for a poacher. His wife sold the estate to the original Club corporation with the black bunting still on the door.

Ever since then, members had been enjoying Curtis’s expansive view from the pillared porch or flagged terrace, but Gerard preferred his own. It was more select. The world was easier to swallow when contemplated through a single window. It cut out the periphery; it cut out the oversized homes that had sprung up in the woods on either side of the course, with their fanlights and columned entries all painfully out of scale, revealing the imperfections that come with enlargements. The only structure marring his line of vision was the pool house down the hill, fetchingly converted from the old slate-roofed stable, thatch being considered unsafe for horses. According to The History of the Eden Rock Country Club (privately printed on the occasion of the Club’s centennial, available in the gift shop for $29.95), the pool was part of the overhaul of 1924, the year the original six-hole golf course was redesigned by the legendary Alister MacKenzie to its current glory. The change had involved a major reordering of the natural elements, but to Gerard, the course looked like Earth on the Day of Creation, give or take a few hole markers. Two miles off in the wooded distance, a white church steeple rose up from the trees as if God had put His very signature on the landscape.

Of course, there was another view. There was always another view. Gerard reflected sourly on the mess behind the club-house, with its kitchen Dumpster, employee parking lot, and mismatched tangle of aluminum utility sheds. A macadam drive led unceremoniously to the service entrance on the frontage road, and there, on the other side of the ivy-covered walls, lay the cheap housing and storage facilities where the city’s workers and materials were incubated. He was loathe to admit it, but he lived out there—if it could be said that he lived anywhere outside his office—in a complex that was more penal colony than apartment. Every day, on waking up in that grim outpost, he felt a wild rush of yearning for the Club.

Just as he was beginning to relax in his swivel chair, his head groundskeeper appeared at his door, filling it. Gerard automatically glanced at Barry’s shoes to see if they were clean before motioning him to come in. But Barry, wearing a pained expression on his freckled face, shook his head. “Best come outside, boss.”

Now what? Gerard thought. He turned to take a quick look in the Chippendale mirror behind him, straightening the collar of the black ERCC polo shirt under his plum linen jacket. Not bad. At twenty-nine he was considered young for his position, but he felt his studied manner and professional calm gave him the authority needed to do the job. He reached in his top drawer for a comb, which he swept through his dark hair, simultaneously examining his bleached teeth and admiring the balanced architecture of his features. His skin was so finely shaven as to make facial hair seem a crude throwback of the species.

Barry was not so natty. He was well scrubbed and firmly packed but, like the rest of the staff, wore a beige T-shirt and khaki pants. Gerard deplored that franchised look, but it was a comfort to the members not to have to wonder whom to order about.

The two men slipped out the side door to the employee parking lot, the only area staff was allowed to smoke. The crow parking lot, the members’ children called it, because a pack of crows, big as chickens, sat crouched along the Dumpster’s rim all day, waiting for workers to bring them their meals. The lid was always left open, in spite of the House & Grounds Committee’s tirades on keeping it closed, but who among the kitchen staff was tall enough or strong enough to close that panel of welded metal up and down? It was as though the birds had designed the thing themselves.

“Won’t believe this,” said Barry, lighting both their cigarettes with an ERCC lighter that was no bigger than his pinky. “Charles Lambert killed a goose.”

“Killed? On purpose?” Gerard tried to think if he’d ever seen Lambert in a rage. Members’ tyrannical frenzies were as common as lost balls, but outright violence? Not since Freddy McWhorter attacked Deacon Swanson with a putter last summer had there been a physical attack at the Club, but that was only after Mrs. McWhorter declared her intention to become the third Mrs. Swanson. And such incidents were quickly excused.

“Freak accident at Plateau.” Barry squinted his pale blue eyes against the smoke as he placed his finger on his temple. “Smack in the head with a Pro V1. Andrew Sortwell called to say entrails were all over the grass, but Pole said it was a fairly bloodless shot.”

“Was there a penalty?” Gerard looked out at the goose-studded course. Some birds had their necks straight up in a gargle, others had them bowed to the ground, but all of them, who numbered in the hundreds some days, were hell-bent on ripping out his expensive sod and fouling the water hazards.

“Going to the Rules Committee.” Barry adjusted the tip of his ERCC duck-billed cap. “Mr. Lambert played the ball near the carcass, but there were bad feelings. Guess he felt he should have been given a chance to start over.”

“We should pay him a bounty.”

The two men looked up at the sound of honking, and three more geese landed in a plumpf and trotted with their wings spread in exaggerated breadth to slow them down. On the ground they were somewhat elegant in their Prince Albert coats, but they were buffoons in getting borne aloft, honked in continual panic while flying, and could barely land without falling on their necks.

“Where should we bury it, boss?” Barry studied the ash on the end of his cigarette.

Gerard exhaled smoke. “Just toss it in there.” He pointed to the Dumpster, just in time to watch a rat emerge from the top of the pile, sleek and sated. The Club’s vermin ignored the exterminator’s weekly bait, as they could well afford to. “What about getting some of that new UV turf treatment? It’s supposed to make geese sick as dogs.”

Gerard had by necessity become an expert on ornithological control. He had tried addling, oiling, laser beams, and electronic black boxes, but the geese still went about their business unperturbed. The summer before, he thought he had the problem licked with three Border collies trained to patrol the course and scare off the geese, but that ended in disaster. If the working dogs were allowed to run free, the members claimed, so could theirs. The experiment lasted one week, although the Club had to pay for the whole season, as contracted, plus all the vet bills.

Barry whistled through his teeth as he crushed his cigarette underfoot, then ran his fingers through his rusty upright hair. “Don’t know. Pretty expensive stuff. Balloon eyes worked okay a couple of years ago until the birds got used to them. We can try them on this generation.”

Gerard looked around and shrugged. “Okay.” He sighed. “And while you’ve got the catalog out, let’s see if there’s anything short of bazookas we haven’t tried yet. For now, send Pole out in a cart and have him scare the geese off the fairways. At cocktail hour, I want the members to see we’ve taken decisive action.” He tossed his butt into the Dumpster and gave Barry a thumbs-up.

Barry stood where he was, pretending to watch two crows descend on the garbage, but when Gerard was out of sight, he hurried to his office in one of the utility buildings. He didn’t like all that talk about making geese sick. It made his stomach turn. Fact of the matter was, ever since Gerard sent him to addle eggs out on the island in May, he was a changed man. He’d only found one active nest so late in the season, but he’d done his job, luring the mating pair away with cornmeal in order to shake their eggs to sterility. But the first egg he shook broke in his hand, and instead of a runny yolk, a wet chartreuse gosling fell to the bottom of the nest.

“Knock me down with a feather,” he’d said. “How cute is that?” He’d touched the little bird, awed by the newness of life.

He’d heard its parents coming through the brush, and although they had no teeth, the business edge of a gander’s wing was a powerful weapon. He ran his hand over the gosling and blew hot breath on him to keep him warm until they arrived. There was no fear in the little fellow’s glassy gaze, only openness. Even adoration. Barry had never felt anything but ill will toward the creatures that ate and dug their way through his greens—the deer, rabbits, voles, and who knows what else, but the worst were the geese. So many of them, so aloof and superior. But they must not start out that way, because look, a few seconds old and the little thing seemed to recognize him as an equal—or a god.

The approaching sound of snapping twigs and rustling feathers grew loud and frantic. Frogs plopped into the water for safety. With a lump in his throat, Barry waved good-bye to the gosling, who raised himself up on his teeny webbed feet and shook his prickly stub of a tail. Barry escaped through the underbrush, but so did the gosling, still groggy and damp, with its naked wings in the air, leaping and jumping to catch up. Barry stopped, intending to bring the baby back to its nest, but when he held it in his hands, he just couldn’t. Fate had thrown them together, man and beast, and who was he to question such a force?

Barry unlocked his office door and looked over his bulky shoulder before closing it. “Forbes,” he whispered.

“Beep!” And the six-week-old foot-high gosling came running to his open arms.

Chapter Three

The Rules of the Game

ARIETTA WINGATE had skin the color of egg whites, with hands as smooth and veined as a good Stilton. Her eyes were a striking Nordic blue, fringed with lashes thick with mascara. She touched her downy hair to check for loose strands but found it perfect, as always. With the help of her cane, she inched her chair next to the library’s fireplace, whose verde antico marble mantel was carved with Roman divinities. The fire she’d requested seemed token in its cavernous maw, which was large enough to roast a heretic. Yet the small flame was necessary because even in July the paneled room was raw, receiving only the weakest sun through the casement windows framed in heavy velvet. The fire also served, as Arietta well knew, as a heavy-handed symbol of the hearth.

She sat with care, adjusting herself on the relic beneath her, then arranged her burgundy linen skirt around her legs. The furniture was positively punitive, but she would not have it changed. Gerard Wilton, that wheedler, once broached the subject with her, explaining that if he put cushions on the rush seats, the committees might actually want to meet in there, the room for which such events were intended, instead of in the lounge. Only the Board of Governors met in the library, and then only on rare occasions for the privacy of formal vote taking. That the others held their meetings elsewhere was fine with Arietta. She’d just as soon have the place to herself and her teas, and even now, waiting for Madeline Lambert, she enjoyed the library as her own. The stained-glass lamp over the table glowed, darkening the recessed shadows of the wooden ceiling, as coffered as a honeycomb. The ambient light washed over the smoke-stained portraits of past Club presidents along the walls, casting them deep in thought.

The door creaked. “Hello, Arietta.” Madeline waved away a dark puff that rose from the hearth when she opened the door. Then she locked it behind her, slapping the heavy deadbolt in place with the edge of her hand. Madeline, dressed in straight gray slacks and tan blouse with a pink cameo at the collar, was a handsome woman, thought Arietta, with her good posture and elegant profile. A smile would make her beautiful, but composure was much the better. It was odd, now, to think of what a shock it had been, back in the late seventies, when Charles brought her home to the Club, an unnaturally blond and outgoing California girl whose own mother had never even married. Good Lord. Who knew how the daughter would behave? But Charles had chosen wisely, because after only a few blunders—casual touching, singing to herself, a preference for revealing clothes—Madeline had fit right in. Even her blond hair had mellowed into light brown with professional highlights.

Madeline kissed Arietta on her suede cheek. “You’re looking well today.”

“Traffic?” Arietta asked in a corrective tone, pretending as always that she’d been kept waiting.

But Madeline was punctual to a fault. Even as they spoke, they heard four bells from the church in town, and they both glanced instinctively at the imposing grandfather clock, which could neither confirm nor deny. It had come with the house, complete with steeples and brass fittings, inlaid with bits of ivory and Roman numerals. It had everything but time. The clock had stopped at six thirty during World War II, when there was no one on the home front to fix it. Afterward, in the postwar years of high suburban living, the Furnishings Committee, an elite subcommittee of House & Grounds, decided it was more charming to let the clock be so. . .