Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances (121 page)

He was divorced, and I thought perhaps he still felt involved. But then he told me in no uncertain terms that his marriage had been a sad mistake and he was very glad it was over.

“Eric, do you have a mistress?” I finally demanded, in an all-out attempt to find out where I stood.

He gave me a long, amazed look and then broke into laughter. “Mistress? Lord, Jan … who’ve you been reading, Jane Austen?”

“Okay, another girl?’

He stopped laughing and took a swig of his drink. Then he shook his head. “Nope. Nothing like that. For a while, before I met you, there was a girl here, a girl there, nothing important. Like you, I surmise. Playing the field, rather tiredly and without much enthusiasm. Again, like you, the job consumes most of my energies.”

“Oh.”

“What’s this all about?” But he had gotten the message. A long look passed between us, and I knew I had gone past the tip of the iceberg. I asked him why the sister and brother act had gone on for so long, when I had clearly shown him how deeply I felt about him, and he said it was because, for him, this was the big and final act, and he didn’t want to ruin it by jumping precipitately.

“Points for him,” Caroline said, breaking into my monologue. “Men can be so crude.”

“Yes, and all unaware of their grossness,” I agreed. “But not Eric, he’s a rara avis.”

I got up. “Why did you let me ramble on so?”

“I enjoyed it. It brought back … other days.” She gave me a piercing look out of her still beautiful dark eyes. “I think we’re going to be friends, Jennie.”

Impulsively I bent and kissed her cheek. “Nothing I’d like better,” I said, and went back to the cottage, where I fell to with dustcloth, Pledge and vacuum.

It was after four when I finished; everything was neat as a pin. I showered and then got into a bikini. I went out the back to spend an hour or so on the beach below.

It was a somewhat scrambling climb down the furzy hill; first good, solid earth, then, at a certain point, sand dunes had built up to join the soil. On the upper part there were some wild flowers springing hardily out of crevices, stumps of trees and coarse brush, and then where the sand began to merge with the earth, much reedy grass, high and stiff and gray-green.

It was exciting to stand at the top and gaze around before clambering down; I felt as though I were on the deck of a ship, at the prow, looking ahead and below at the water my craft was cutting. The Lestranges had chosen their sea haven well; way up on a high rise, where they were safe from inundations, part of the sea but not of it. They had a view, but were not in danger.

The water was choppy; it was early in the season, and cold, bracing and biting. The sand, however, was warm from the sun, and I lay relaxing, feeling as if I were all alone in the world.

A little privacy can be a precious thing.

I was in bed by ten that night.

Eric arrived next day at around noon, in his beloved Porsche. I gave him some lunch and then we went down to the beach to work on our tans. We took a leisurely drive later, and had dinner at The Hedges.

We drank a bottle of wine between us with our meal, were played out from sun, air and Beaujolais and fell asleep when our heads hit the pillows.

The next thing I knew it was bright morning, and the telephone was ringing.

Eric got it.

I heard him say, “Oh, hello, how are you?” and turned over to face him.

He was listening, but mouthed, “It’s her.”

“Caroline?” I mouthed back.

He nodded. Then he said, “Yes, one moment, I’ll call her.”

I waited discreetly. It’s one thing to be frank and open about a relationship; it’s another thing to flaunt it. So after counting to sixty, I picked up the receiver.

“Hello,” I said.

“Good morning, pet. Did I get you out of the tub?”

“Don’t give it another thought. How are you this morning?”

“Very well, and you?” She didn’t wait for an answer, but went right on. “I wondered if you and your young man would care to go to church with me?”

I started to say, “I beg your pardon?” because I thought I must have misheard. I simply didn’t equate Caroline Lestrange with Sunday Services, but she went on to clarify. “Service starts at eleven, my dear. I go to St. Luke’s. Episcopalian. I don’t go as a regular thing, but it’s such a pretty, sunny day, and it suddenly seemed like a
nice
thing to do. Of course if your principles are against it I shall certainly understand.”

“Good heavens,” I said. “I was brought up in the bosom of the church. We’ll go, Caroline.”

“The car will pick you up at a quarter to the hour,” she said briskly, and rang off.

“We’re going to church,” I told Eric.

“Say that again.”

“Church, Episcopalian, unless your principles are against it.”

“Oh, okay,” he said, looking a little dazed. “I don’t mind much. Are we going to have to spend a lot of time with her?”

“I think I can manage things,” I said smoothly. “I’ll start breakfast. The car’s picking us up at a quarter to eleven. It’s a Rolls. You’ll like that, won’t you?”

“I somehow thought she’d drive an old electric.”

“She doesn’t drive at all. There’s a chauffeur.”

“Might as well live it up,” he said good naturedly. “You certainly know how to pick them, Jan.”

“On occasion I can be depended on,” I said, and dashed to the kitchen to put the coffee on.

• • •

We were dressed and waiting like too good little children when the shiny Rolls, circa 1937 or thereabouts (with one of those basket-weave triangles on each side of the tonneau) pulled up smartly in front of the cottage. John, whom I had seen the day before in falling-down pants, was in an immaculate chauffeur’s uniform; he hopped out from behind the driver’s seat to open one of the rear doors with a flourish. “Mornin’,” he said cheerily. “Nice day, ain’t it?”

In the back were Caroline and Emily. Eric was given one of the jump seats, where he sat facing us and looking a little embarrassed. Caroline, in a stunning Chanel suit, was all smiles, but Emily seemed sour about our being there. She was dressed all in black, as for a state funeral, and her murmured good morning was far from effusive.

“We shall have a pleasant lunch in Amagansett after the service,” Caroline informed us. “Then I shall leave you alone for the rest of the week-end.” Which was rather large of her; we would be driving back to the city at around three or four.

Yet we had a surprisingly nice time. Church, because of the nearing summer season, was short and sweet, mostly ritual and not much of a sermon, and Caroline, being something of a celebrity, got the red carpet treatment. The minister held both of her hands and thanked her for her attendance, and then asked about her family. “I hope to see some of them during the summer,” he said.

Our lunch was at Fromm’s, and exceedingly pleasant, though Caroline overindulged with cocktails and wine and had to be helped back into the car by John and Emily. Emily was highly incensed, and kept muttering.

“Hangover … you’ll have a hangover … disgusting behavior.”

“Ah, shut up,” Caroline said testily. “How I detest these holier-than-thou personalities!”

But she was in a mellow mood, feeling no pain, and kissed both of us good-bye, telling us to enjoy our day and thanking us for accompanying her to church. “So few people
care
; you’re so
kind
,” she said; she looked through the back window as the Rolls drove up the circular drive.

It was too late to do very much, though we’d decided on a drive; instead we went down to the beach again and lay in the sun, half asleep. Before we got dressed to leave, we walked through the rooms of the cottage, exclaiming at our good fortune; then we got into our city clothes to drive back to Manhattan.

It was irritating not to share a car, but there was nothing we could do about it. We would rarely arrive together at East Hampton, and the two-car hassle was a necessity. I would have liked to talk everything over on the way, laugh and indulge in office gossip. Driving down alone was one thing, with the fun ahead of you. Driving back alone was something else.

But Eric called me as I was getting ready for bed. “Get home all right?” he wanted to know.

“No, I had a gruesome accident on the road and will be in traction for the next year and a half.”

“Sorry to hear it, I’ll send flowers,” he said, and then, “Good night, Jan; I love you.”

“I love you too, Eric.”

When you meet someone new, suddenly your horizon expands to include that person. My thoughts were of Eric, as usual, and of work on the following day. Only now there was also Caroline Lestrange to think about, and even Emily. I thought, too, about Toussaint, that great, dark, hulking man whose elusive figure, massive and muscled, I had glimpsed at intervals over the course of the last few days. He seemed able to appear and disappear at will, fading sometimes into the shrubbery or the shadows, as if swallowed up in a puff of smoke.

Well, I thought, I would probably always shiver a bit whenever I came face to face with that rather awesome Haitian, though I doubted I’d have much to do with him. I didn’t think he was particularly happy about my being there on the Lestrange compound.

Nor was Emily, who didn’t try to conceal her dislike, or displeasure. Emily, too, had made it plain that she was no friend of mine.

But the advantages outweighed the disadvantages, and at the moment nothing mattered except that I had found a beautiful place in which to spend this summer. A summer which I intended to enjoy to the full.

We’d taken Eric’s children to dinner before. I chose a fish place on Madison Avenue, not by any means inexpensive; a rather attractive restaurant, with a Normandy cuisine. Les Marayeurs offers an amusing gambit as you go in: when you open the outer door the sound of the sea and the sigh of the surf booms out, due to special sound effects, and I thought the kids would be entertained by it.

“They’d probably be more receptive to the Hickory Pit or MacDonald’s,” Eric said, but I knew he was pleased that I wanted to give his progeny something nicer.

From the first, as usual, it was a near disaster. Both of them, aged ten and eight respectively, had been restive during the cocktail interlude, so much so that Eric insisted, angry and punishing, on a third Martini. At which Brenda (the ten year old) said in a sharp little voice, “I just hope nobody gets drunk.”

Eric didn’t answer that, but he flushed visibly. I felt again that he should simply take them out alone.

I often thought that, but Eric, resolute and hopeful, insisted that in time they would be won over. “I want them to accept realities, they have to accept realities.”

In the beginning I had been excited about inheriting two children in a way, not having any of my own. I made all sorts of plans, envisioned myself taking them to museums, zoos, the movies. I thought of leading them by the hand while they clung to me as we did our Christmas shopping. I would be a special person in their lives.

After all, they were Eric’s children.

No such luck.

I could have won over the boy. I liked him at once, warmed to him. He was a nice boy, with a nice, shy smile, and I felt he liked me. If it hadn’t been for his sister, it would have been duck soup. Kenny was very much like Eric, with Eric’s slow smile and kind ways, and I knew we could have had a decent relationship.

The snag really was Brenda. I didn’t know the mother, but I rather thought Brenda
was
the mother, that she had little of Eric in her, and at ten, was already a woman and not a very graceful one. That’s a horrible thing to say about a child, but she was a female who had the very worst of the female in her; I thought I could understand why men called women catty and calculating.

She was very pretty. I could scarcely keep my eyes off her, but her prettiness didn’t seem to be a boon to her. Often good-looking women are more amiable than plain ones. If you’re good to look at, life seems more pleasant, easier.

Yet with Brenda this didn’t appear to be the case. She was prickly, quick to criticize, and decidedly on her mother’s side. Her father had left the nest … Therefore there must be something nasty about him. So this woman who suddenly showed up (me) must have something rotten and predatory about her too.

I wanted to get along, but she didn’t.

I couldn’t blame her. Yet her parents
had been
divorced and I hadn’t even been in the picture at the time. How could I be held responsible?

There were times when I felt I was making progress. Once I took them to see the Ingmar Bergman film,
The Magic Flute
. Brenda, as we left the theater, had stars in her eyes.

“It was beautiful,” she said.

She even put a hand through my arm. Then, as if I had burned her, she withdrew her hand. And gave me that cold little glance. She said, “Thank you,” and removed herself, suddenly miles away.

That was the only time she ever touched me.

She had a way of staring at me, her eyes roving over me in a quietly assessing way: well, what do we have here? her impudent gaze seemed to say. And every time Eric, from long habit and unthinkingly, called me by some endearment, the girl winced elaborately, as if at some horrid gaucherie.

When the meal came I had no appetite at all. Brenda picked, too, though Kenny seemed to enjoy what he was eating. He looked up once or twice, grinning, and when he lost his napkin on the floor, said, “Oops, I guess I’m a clumsy galumph.”

“How’s your crayfish, sweetheart?” Eric asked me.

Brenda flinched, put down her fork and stared into the distance with a pained, violated look.

I said my crayfish was delicious, I was very fond of crayfish.

“And you, kids, enjoying your dinner?” he asked them.

“Great,” Kenny said enthusiastically.

Brenda had no response.

“Brenda?” Eric inquired.

She looked back at him as if he were a stranger suddenly accosting her.

“I beg your pardon?” she asked.

“How’s your dinner?”

“Oh. Very nice,” she said politely.

“You’re not making much progress with it. Would you rather have something else?”