Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances (126 page)

“The time?”

“Your date in the Orangerie with yonder fair maiden.”

He looked over at Peter’s date. “You didn’t think I’d overlook something that promising?”

“And don’t forget to give dear old Mum a sleeping pill before you sneak out.”

He laughed. “Did you hear that, too, you snoop?”

Pretty soon a small army of uniformed men came out to clear the debris away; the drinking began again, in earnest now, and — as at most parties — sooner or later defenses were down and you talked with anybody standing next to you. It is really a kind of innocence, when nothing matters but
joie de vivre
, everyone thaws, and a general camaraderie takes over.

Tom, simulating drunkenness on stiff glasses of coke, became quite silly, imitating classic lushes, until his father had to reprimand him. One of Peter’s house guests, a rather plain girl but with a magnificent body, did a belly dance (which she had learned at a Health Club) and Eric did a takeoff on Peter Sellers doing a takeoff on a Viennese psychiatrist.

Then Garrison Lestrange, of all people, recited some unbelievably raunchy limericks. So bawdy, in fact, that I’m sure they were way over Tom’s head; the boy applauded the loudest, sure, I was convinced that his father was reeling off Chaucer.

I saw Eric embracing a few girls and chucking them under the chin, but I was doing my share of consciousness-raising too, and as I was having a high old time I was glad he was as well. I was having a very good time indeed, whirling my sparkler around, and I made a point of telling Kathy Lestrange that people were having fun and that it was all due to her. I said she put on a very good show, a
really
good show. The next thing I knew the night was filled with glares, blazes and dazzling lights; Peter, Lester and Garrison had started the fireworks. There was a deafening crackling sputtering, and then whooshes as flares and Catherine wheels were sent up into the starry sky. Pinwheels and shooting stars flamed, coloring our faces like flashbulbs catching you unawares.

It was quite beautiful; it was somehow like being in a film, or an Edwardian country weekend.

It came to an end somehow. Emily, who had not attended the bash (“She breaks out in a livid flush in large groups of people,” Caroline explained) was not available to help Caroline, but Toussaint appeared, in his customary necromantic fashion, the minute Caroline got up and started walking across the lawn.

She told him, in French, just to help her to the house. “I’ve overimbibed,” she said ruefully, then grasped my arm. “You won’t mind coming to my room, Jennie?”

I signalled to Eric, he apparently understood what my assignment was to be and Caroline’s house seemed very quiet after all that bedlam. We managed the stairs; her room was enormous, and very feminine, with stunning appointments and carpeting thick enough to drown in. Her bed, like that of a DuBarry, could have slept three with comfort.

I helped her undress. She was as obedient as a child, raising an arm when I so directed, and putting each foot up for me to take off her shoes. Once she laughed and said, “Yes, ma’am,” and twinkled down at me.

Her body was not gray or horrid, but simply that of an older woman whose muscle and flesh had lost their tone. Wrinkles where you would expect them, and some minor varicose veins. I was again astonished at how wonderfully in trim she was for someone of her years.

I kissed her good night; outside, Eric and the Viscount were standing near the house, talking in low voices, and the catering people were carrying the party props into the house which I now knew to be were Peter Lestrange lived. The tonga torches were gone, as were all the small tables and chairs and most of the lights in the houses were slowly going out.

“Caroline okay?” Anthony Cavendish asked.

“Yes, she’s probably already asleep.”

“After a while,” he said, “I watered her drinks. One of these days, tanked up like that, she’ll fall and break a hip.”

“Oh, but this
was
rather a special occasion.”

“Did you enjoy it?” he asked me.

“Very much. You?”

“So so,” he said. “I never saw Caroline take to someone as she’s taken to you.”

“She’s a little bit lonely, isn’t she?”

“That’s why I make it my business to see her as much as possible.”

“It’s very good of you.”

“I’ve known her practically forever.”

“Yes, so she said.”

“Well, then — ”

He tapped Eric’s arm, nodded briskly, and started up the stone steps. “Cheerio,” he said. “See you.”

Eric and I walked back along the stone path. There was that faint, delicious chill in the air that you find in the country of an evening, and the various smells of grass and bush and blossom, and the swishing of leaves in the perfumed breeze. The sky was starred and vast, the world was revolving in its orbit, and there wasn’t a worry on my mind.

I thought I must have found Paradise.

We slept late next morning, and apparently so did Caroline. There was no word from her, no shrill telephone shattering the somnolent holiday quiet.

That somnolent quiet persisted, in fact, until well after midday. Then, around one, when Eric and I were having breakfast, there were the sounds of car doors being slammed, the crunch of gravel and many comings and goings. Whatever hangovers there were seemed to have been conquered, probably via hair of the dog, and the country club atmosphere of the Lestrange compound resumed.

Eric decided to drive to the village to see if he could get the
Times
. Eric is lost without his paper. I said I’d be on the beach when he got back, and did the dishes. I was just putting the last of them in the drainer when the doorbell rang.

I thought it must be Tom, but when I answered it, Peter Lestrange appeared. It was daylight now, and I had my first real look at him. Evidently he had the same reaction; the two of us stood there for a quick moment studying each other.

I don’t know what his impression was, but mine was of someone my own age or thereabouts, perhaps a year or two older: he had fine brown hair which was soft and attractive, but which would in time probably thin out at the hairline and eventually become non-existent at the crown of his head. He would be one of those well-groomed older men with a year-round St. Croix tan and a membership at his family’s Clubs. Right now, though, he was a not too tall young man with a somewhat burly build. No fat, but well-padded muscles, and a rather full face that might turn jowly when he aged.

His rather full face was a
nice
face, kind and sensitive, and he had fine gray eyes which borrowed a touch of the blue from his shirt. His legs were bare, and I assumed he wore swim trunks under the loose shirt.

“Are you alone?” he asked.

“For the moment. Eric’s gone to the village.”

“I know. I saw him leave.”

“What can I do for you, Peter?”

“How about joining us at the pool?”

“That’s kind of you, but I was planning to go down to the beach.”

“Look,” he said. “May I come with you? Frankly, I’m bored with my guests and would very much like to escape.”

“Then come in,” I said. “I hate to see a hunted thing. Never fear, Jan Stewart will save you.”

He came in quickly and shut the door.

“Coffee?” I offered, but he shook his head. “Then I’ll just change into my beach things. You don’t mind waiting for a minute?”

When I was bikinied, I rejoined him and we went out through the back. He preceded me down the hill, and we walked across the fine white sand and walked right into the water. After a moment or two it didn’t seem cold any more, and we struck out for a swim, and then turned back after ten or fifteen minutes.

“Brr,” he said.

“Yes, well, it’s still early in the season.”

“Sand’s warm, at any rate.”

“It does feel good.”

As we talked, he asked me the inevitable question. How had I come to know Caroline?

I told him. “And if it hadn’t been for my spotting that cottage, I would never have seen her again.”

“You’ve made a hit with her.”

“It just so happens that we liked each other almost right away. I spoke French to her and she liked that.”

He laughed. “She’s the original Francophile. How clever of you, Jan.”

“It was simply an accident.”

“A fortuitous accident.”

“You don’t mind her liking me, do you?”

He laughed again. “You mean am I jealous? I don’t love her. She doesn’t love me. Maybe she did when I was little and ‘cute.’ She never had children and she never wanted them. She seemed fond of us all when we were kids, though. Some women are like that. They go for other people’s kids. The way they do for small dogs. Or kittens. But they don’t want the responsibility. Caroline’s a narcissist. I don’t suppose I have to tell you that.”

“I don’t judge her for it.”

“I don’t either. Anyway. After all, she was always an old woman in my eyes. An aunt can be different, but not a great-aunt. The distance in age is in light years.” He gave me a curious look. “That’s what’s so puzzling about you and her. She’s a cold, hard woman, and I would think she’d resent your young loveliness, begrudge it to you.”

“We recognize in each other that we’re both tough, strong-minded women.”

“Oh, are you a tough, strong-minded woman?” He drew back, as if in panic. “I must remember that. In case I should be seized with an impulse to make a pass.” He leaned on an elbow and looked down at me. “I don’t say I would necessarily be seized with such an impulse.”

“I’m relieved to hear it,” I said. “It would be most unwise and it wouldn’t do either of us any good.”

“I see,” he said. “What’s-his-name.”

I nodded. “Yes, what’s-his-name.”

“Ah. Okay. Forewarned is forearmed.”

I smiled pleasantly. “Tell me about what’s-her-name.”

He smiled too. “Her? We’re just good friends.”

“That’s what they always say just before you read about a wedding in the paper. By the way, I recognized her after a bit. Daphne Dowling, that’s who she is. I’ve seen her in the glossies, having lunch at La Grenouille and wearing Diane von Furstenberg dresses with Valentino shoes.”

“You mean she’s a type. Right. She is.”

“Your type.”

“Putting me down, aren’t you?”

“No, why should I?”

“Yes you are. You don’t know you are, but you are.”

“I honestly didn’t mean to.” And I hadn’t. But I guess it was a kind of inverse snobbery. I tried to make up for it.

I said, “I’m going to confess that the name Daphne was a favorite with me when I was young.”

He chuckled. “When you were young? What do you think you are now?”

“Longish in the tooth, thirty this September.”

“Catching up to Caroline,” he said, shaking his head.

“All right, when I was very young. I adored the name Daphne, came across it in a book somewhere, and thought it sounded like a water nymph. I didn’t like Jan, it meant nothing, it was so undistinguished. So I had D.S. initialed on a handbag, and went around telling strangers that my name was Daphne Stewart.”

“I’ll have to tell her that.”

“She wouldn’t be interested.”

“No,” he admitted. “She wouldn’t. She’d just be sore. That I abandoned her this morning for you.”

“Where is she now?”

“At the pool, trying not to get her suit wet.”

“Why
did
you leave your guests?” I asked. “Aside from being so smitten with me that you couldn’t wait to see me. You said you were bored. Why? They’re young, like you, and you asked them here.”

“Hell,” he said, “they’re about what you labelled them, when you typecast Daph as one of those Beautiful People who lunch every day with their counterparts and make a little news. Like my own family, to be candid. My family lead public lives. They exist to see and be seen. They don’t roam remote beaches, they gather in gaggles to feed on each other’s lives. They don’t have a waking moment that isn’t fully recorded by the rest of the clan. With a few exceptions, of course.”

“Of course.”

“And I’m not like that,” he said. “I’m not at all like that.”

But you might become like that, I thought. In time.

As if he could read my thoughts, he said, “I’ll never be like that.”

I looked closely at him, at the strong jaw, the sensitive mouth, the fine, gray eyes. Maybe, I thought, maybe he wouldn’t get like that. His great-aunt Caroline hadn’t been like that. Caroline Lestrange had led her own life … free and unrestrained.

“How long will you be here?” he asked me.

“We’re leaving late this afternoon.”

“And then again? Next week-end?”

“Every week-end.”

“Will what’s-his-name be here?”

“I’m certainly counting on it.”

“I must remind myself that coming to be fond of you would be most unwise and wouldn’t do either of us any good,” he said solemnly.

“Tie a string around your finger,” I advised, and heard the sound of someone making his way down the hill.

“That would be — ” Peter said, sitting up.

“Yes,” I replied. “That would be what’s-his-name.”

• • •

The two men actually got along very well. Peter was no philistine: he had his Master’s in English Lit, and a good, strong taste in authors.

We spent an hour or two together, then Eric and I dressed for a drive when we went back to the cottage. I was ready first, and on an impulse rang up Caroline. Claire answered, and called Caroline, who came on with a cheery hello. “I wondered if you’d like to come for a short drive,” I proposed.

“Aren’t you nice! But no, I wouldn’t think of it. I know this is a short day for you, so enjoy what there is of it. I would have called you this morning, but I’m a bit under the weather. Nothing I can pin down. Just a general malaise. At any rate, thanks very much. Be a good girl and I’ll see you next week-end, then. In the meantime, is there anything you feel you need?”

I hesitated, then took the plunge. “As a matter of fact, yes,” I said. “I was wondering if you had any extra pillows. I do so like a lot of pillows. As a matter of fact, I meant to bring some of mine this week-end, but forgot. Of course, if you’ve no extras, I can — ”