Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances (132 page)

It seemed ridiculous that they should just stand there, unmoving, without a glance in our direction. So utterly ridiculous that I wanted to call over to them, challenge them in some way.

“The sentinels,” Anthony Cavendish said in a brittle voice. “Look at them; aren’t they inane? Caroline’s central intelligence agency. And like the CIA, just as sinister.”

I thought that was a bit much, and protested. “They’re just doing what they’re paid for,” I said feebly.

“You’ll learn,” he said.

“Oh, about Toussaint, I fully agree. I loathe him. But Emily?”

He was unimpressed. “Toussaint? He’s only an animal.”

“Even an animal has brains. And cunning.”

“Bugger him. It’s her. She’s the dangerous one.”

I tried to shrug it off. “Oh well, it isn’t my affair, is it? I’m only a paying guest here.”

“What do you suppose I am?” he asked quietly.

“Tony, how idiotic!”

“Really?” he said, and started off. A few feet away he turned and called back. “See you,” he said. “See you a lot. Perhaps tonight. If not, then tomorrow and tomorrow and — ”

I watched him walk off. He didn’t really have to skirt Emily and Toussaint, but he did come fairly near them as he walked up the flagstoned path, and I felt admiration for him. Not for a second did his eyes turn their way. He just walked along, with his graceful, lithe step, aristocratic and sure, and I thought, blood did tell, whether you liked it or not … that he could be so lordly, and contemptuous of small minds and prying eves.

Whatever else I might think about him, I had to give him that.

• • •

There was only one day more left of that week-end, and that only half of a day, the Sunday, when I had to leave shortly after four, and drive back to Manhattan. I did have lunch with Caroline and Emily and Anthony, but Caroline was clearly not up to par, and so it was all rather subdued and not at all suited to my own somewhat pensive mood.

But the following week-end brought developments of an entirely different kind.

I had an early morning call, on the next Friday, from Caroline. After her initial hello, she said briskly that there were some people she thought I might like to meet, friends of hers, and suggested that we leave at around one.

“Dress nicely,” she said. “I don’t mean
formally
, pet, but look beautiful I think you’ll enjoy today.”

“Is it all of us?” I asked. “Emily, and Tony too?”

“No, just you and I.”

“Where are we going?”

“Montauk.”

“All right, I’ll try to look decent. I won’t let you down, Caroline.”

“They’ll give us lunch, so just have an ordinary breakfast”

I was in the Rolls at just after one o’clock.

On the way out, she said we were going to be with people on the literary scene, which she knew would interest me, but she wouldn’t say their names. “You’ll recognize them,” she assured me. “I want it to be a surprise.”

We reached Montauk after the usual pleasant drive there. Then, after bumping along on a rustic road, we came to a quiet and rather wild preserve, where there were some small outbuildings, and a bosky pond, then a mansard-roofed structure that had been renovated and painted, and looked very attractive and inviting.

The Rolls churned up some dust and John, at the wheel, parked a short distance from the house. There was a man outside, bending over some sturdy looking tomato plants, and when the car approached, he looked up attentively.

He was in a blue shirt, really a French porter’s smock, and I recognized him instantly I heard Caroline’s chortle

“Why, that’s Lawrence Portheus,” I said

“I knew you’d be pleased,” she said

He came over to the car and, as John opened the door for us and helped us out, kissed Caroline on both cheeks, took my hands as I was introduced, said I was worth waiting to meet, and invited us in.

And so we spent an afternoon with one of my favorite authors, and with his equally well-known mistress, Yvonne Chartre. Their eminence, and their long-term liaison, were as lustrous as that of Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir Leave it to Caroline, I thought, and said as much.

“You seem to know everyone,” I told her.

“Not everyone, but I could if I cared to,” she answered.

Their house was charming, like a French
auberge
, with one of those kitchens that had a central island in which the range stood surrounded by counter space. On an iron circle over it, suspended from the ceiling, hung pots and pans, and utensils of all kinds. They showed us around like proud parents displaying offspring, and after drinks we had lunch on a weathered sundeck that overlooked a panorama of sky and water.

Lawrence had made lunch: “I’m chief cook and bottle washer,” he announced, “and Yvonne says this is a great trial to her; I’m reputed to be not very tidy in my ways. Grease on the floor, she claims, and a great mess to clean up. But I think I’m a first-class chef, and I hope you’ll think so.”

He was: everything was French; Provençal. First there was a tidbit of creamed mushrooms, then asparagus sautéd in breadcrumbs, and the main dish was a succulent
cassoulet
. Dessert was one of my favorites, a
marron mousse
, with riced whipped cream. There was
café filtre
, and cognac.

After which Lawrence smoked a Gauloise, and Yvonne a small cigar. Then the four of us took a walk along the beach.

Sometimes we walked abreast of each other, and at others, I found myself with one or the other of our hosts, so I had an opportunity to speak to each of them separately.

And study them.

Neither of them was prepossessing looking. Lawrence, whose press pictures clearly flattered him, was terribly sunburned, with peel starting here and there, and he had small, ugly red veins alongside his nose, which was frightfully bulbous. He had a big head and a long torso, but his legs were very short, as were his arms. Yet he had that unmistakable air of authority that justified acclaim. I found him fascinating.

Yvonne, on the other hand, was almost a head taller than he, with a strong, almost masculine face that was beginning to furrow here and there with wrinkles. She was flat-chested, but had hips that were broad and fecund-looking, though all the world knew she was childless. Her fame was not literary, but that of the paramour of a literary man, and although she was far from beautiful, she reflected his eclat, and exuded boundless confidence herself.

They had been living in Montauk for a few summers, absolutely without company or the desire for any. They seemed to adore each other, and called each other “Cheri,” and “Cherie.”

We left at a reasonably early hour, and drove back to East Hampton. “So you enjoyed them,” Caroline said, happy with her little surprise.

“Enormously,” I assured her. “How do you know them, Caroline?”

“Oh, eight or nine years ago I took a house in Provence,” she said. “It was before I began falling apart physically.” She shuddered. “I can’t imagine faring very far now, with all my aches and pains. At any rate, I was summering in Arles, and I met them through someone, and we became friends. He was writing
The Istanbul Story
, and she was babying him at a great rate, more or less force-feeding him, and seeing to it that he didn’t wreck his health — that sort of thing.”

She dropped her voice and leaned toward me. “Jennie, now this is a deep, dark secret, which you are never to divulge to
anyone
. I had my solicitors furnish him a rather large sum of money, as he was almost entirely out of funds.”

She looked a little smug. “So you see, my pet, I made
some
contribution to greatness Without my aid, perhaps
The Istanbul Story
never would have been completed.”

“I think you’re wonderful,” I said with unabashed admiration, and she glowed

“That’s praise enough for me,” she replied, and took my hand, holding it affectionately.

So we rode back in the Rolls, and I almost asked why Anthony Cavendish had not been included in this jaunt Something stopped me, though discretion, perhaps.

I really had no right to inquire about her decisions, no right to question her in any way, when it came right down to it.

I thanked her when we reached my cottage.

She started to say something and then, turning to John, said she would get out for a few minutes to stretch her legs; would he put the car in the garage, please.

“Let’s just stroll about for a bit,” she said then.

“Fine,” I said, and we ambled toward the lawn and started walking over it. It was newly mown, and I remembered my first glimpse of the Lestrange estate, now months ago. I had thought it looked forlorn then, uninhabited. Now, with the trees in full leaf, with blossoms burgeoning and the grass sleek and green and lush, it was beautiful; it was a wonderful place to be.

“You mustn’t thank me all the time,” Caroline said suddenly, abruptly. “You’re always thanking me. Child, don’t you
realize?
Having you here? It’s like … it’s like.”

Her still lovely eyes, dark and with that dewy look her flawed vision gave her, gazed into mine so intently and so searchingly that I felt somehow transfixed. Not uncomfortable, really, but unable to look away, even to blink. It was as if her intention were to hypnotize me.

At last she looked away, and straight ahead.

“It’s like having a daughter,” she said, low.

She said it as if admitting to a vice. In an almost shamed, guilty way.

And I?

Somehow then, when she told me that, I did finally feel uncomfortable, uneasy as well. I had cherished our woman-to-woman relationship, her treating me as someone to be reckoned with, someone whose
esprit
she admired, someone something like herself.

But now … a
daughter?

What she said next, however, altered everything, cleared the air of the momentary sentimentality, and gave me a little shock. Still staring straight ahead, she said, “Last year, during a rotten winter, I considered suicide. Not only considered, but began saving sleeping pills, and even thought about a jump from some high place.”

“But why?” I asked carefully. “You have so much, Caroline. Wealth, power, renown, and — ”

“And loneliness,” she reminded me quietly. “Bitter, bitter loneliness. I have
nothing
but that. I’ve been dead for a long time.”

“But you have inner resources,” I said earnestly. “You’re not a vegetable kind of person! All the things you’ve done, the people you’ve met.”

“You’re not going to tell me to be satisfied with my memories!” she said sharply.

“I didn’t
mean
that. I meant, you make most people seem vapid and totally
uninteresting
. You’re so vibrant, and fabulous and fascinating.”

“If you’re not fascinating for yourself you’re a dead duck,” she said passionately, but a second or two later she laughed uproariously. Threw back her head in that characteristic way of hers and laughed. Almost at once a faint color came back in her cheeks and she tossed her good, strong hair girlishly.

“Listen to me,” she cried, through her bubbling laughter. “Doing my best to be
anything
but diverting, and fascinating, as you so generously put it. Why, first thing I know, you’ll begin avoiding me, as the others do, and I shan’t be able to blame anyone but myself!”

She turned and smiled into my eyes. “My poor Jennie,” she said, fondly. “Forgive me, do. Put it down to other places, other times. Seeing Portheus again brought back so damned much. That summer in Aries … it wasn’t all that long ago, but I was still well, and strong, and yes … still decent-looking.”

“Will you persist in thinking I’m being kind when I insist you’re still far more than decent-looking? I wish you could see yourself with my eyes. When I’m your age I’ll be plain and colorless. I wish it were different, but I didn’t start out with your kind of Rossetti looks.”

“Oh, twaddle,” she cried, and started laughing again. “What do you care what you look like when you’re my age? You’ll only care when you get there.”

She was again in good humor and said she would go in now and have a rest before dinner. “You’ll be over for drinks beforehand, Jennie? Fine, and I’m glad you enjoyed this afternoon.”

I trotted off after I left her at her door, and went back to the cottage. I stood inside and thought what a pleasure it had been to meet Lawrence Portheus and Yvonne Chartre

If only Eric could have been with us.

I could call him and tell him about it.

But, of course — the time difference. Ten or eleven in the evening in Berlin … surely not late enough for him to be trundling off to bed.

I gave it a second thought, and dialed the operator, placing a person to person call. When it came through I was told that Herr Sloane was not in his room. I said “Keep ringing, please,” but after a while the voice came again and repeated the information.

“Herr Sloane is not answering.”

“Thank you, I’ll try again,” I said, and hung up.

I felt lonely, bereft, and reflected on Caroline. But this was the way she felt all the
time
. Eric would be coming back, but for Caroline there was no one to come back. Her contemporaries, most of them if not all, were gone and could never return. For Caroline, there was no one to await.

• • •

I rested for an hour, then got up, showered, and dressed for the evening. I knew Caroline liked to see me in something soft and feminine, so I got into cocktail pajamas the color of creme de menthe, an Oscar de la Renta I had bought at cost, courtesy of a friend. I looked long at myself and thought, Cavendish will like this too, and then wondered if it was really Caroline for whom I had dressed.

Oh, don’t belabor it, I told myself impatiently, and left the house. I found myself looking for Toussaint over my shoulder, feeling he might be somewhere behind me, but was annoyed at my
idée fixe
about him, and resolutely stopped glancing around.

It was very pleasant on Caroline’s outdoor patio, and she herself was looking very well, almost rosy. She looked somehow relaxed, unwound, and I thought that confession, after all, must be good for the soul. She had unburdened herself about her suicidal thoughts, and it seemed to have done her good.