An Independent Woman (37 page)

“Freddie is civilized,” Barbara agreed. “He's been around the course and he's paid his dues. He put his life on the line when he went down South for the registration drive, and he almost lost it. I love Freddie.”

“And he's kept Highgate going. Adam is no businessman. He grows grapes and makes wine, but if it weren't for Freddie this place would collapse. And I'm glad that he teamed up with Harry. Harry's very smart. But let me tell you the rest of it. You won't believe it—but just listen. Judith is pregnant.”

“I knew that. But I thought she had lost the baby in the accident.”

“Yes, which is exactly what Judith and Freddie thought, and if you can believe it, neither of them spoke to the doctor about it, and they just went mooning along like a couple of idiot children, and she missed her second period. Then, finally, she had herself examined, and there she was, healthy and pregnant and into the second trimester, and she told her mother about it, and her mother told her father, and the wedding is to take place next week in a Baptist church in Oakland. I would have written to you, but I didn't know when you were leaving Israel, and this was not something I could tell you over the phone. Would you have believed it, Barbara—you and May Ling and now Freddie and Judith.”

“How did her father react?” Barbara wondered aloud.

“From all I hear, he was in a royal rage but then quieted down and finally took it with good grace. Judith was terrified. Freddie is happy as a clam. He's babbling about building a house on that stone outcropping on the hillside. So if it goes through, we'll have another child here. Anyway, Judith will be here tomorrow with her father and mother, so I'll have two of the girls in the kitchen to help Cathrena. I don't know how I'm going to survive it, but I will. And there I've been talking all afternoon, and I haven't even asked you about Philip and your trip.”

What should she say? Barbara asked herself. That she had married a good man who was driving her up the wall? Or that she hadn't the vaguest notion who she, Barbara Lavette Carter, was; or that she was content and unhappy, selfish and unselfish, bewildered and unable to live with Philip or to live without him? Would Eloise understand—or would Eloise listen in total confusion? One thing she had come to realize—she could never leave Philip. She accepted that. Philip should have married someone like Eloise, but he had fallen in love with Barbara and married her.

“Philip …,” Barbara said, and then she hesitated and paused for a long moment. “Philip is a dear, saintly man—it's not a bit easy for an old warhorse like me to be married to a saintly man, but I'm working it out.”

F
OR PHILIP THE PROBLEM WAS
even more inscrutable. He was a sensitive man, and he had been quite sincere when he said to Barbara that she was one of the most religious persons he had ever known; but a religion without faith, without any belief other than a compassion for human beings, or for that matter for all living things—he had watched her delight in the three dogs that had the range of Highgate—such was beyond his understanding. Being Philip, he looked at his own faith, examined it as he never had before, and refused in any way to blame Barbara. He was deeply moved when he learned that in his absence, when news of his experience at the bus appeared in the press, his congregation had prayed for his recovery, not yet knowing the seriousness of his burns, and had lit candles. There was nothing in the doctrine of Unitarianism—if indeed it could be named a doctrine—that called for faith or a belief in the mystery of man's being. His own faith was deep inside him, so deep that he had never actually questioned it.

Having lived for so long without family of any kind, without even his wife, Agatha, he had taken to Barbara's extended and marvelously mixed family with delight. It was like the consummation of impossible dreams, and he adored Barbara and even bore the guilt of realizing that this was a new kind of love, in his mind almost pagan in the sexual passion he felt for her and in his willingness to learn newly how to make love to a woman.

He had always felt that the sermon he delivered Christmas Eve was the most important sermon of the year—a feeling he kept to himself. He would make notes and begin to lay it out starting around Thanksgiving Day. He had none of Barbara's facility in writing. When he read her
Notes of a War Correspondent
and was informed that she had written much of it on an old portable typewriter at the place where the things she wrote of were happening, he had reacted with awe. Himself, he struggled with each word—started and threw everything away, and started again and again. Finally he realized that he could not write about his own experience in Israel without first understanding Barbara's experience.

Lying in bed that night, propped up on one elbow and watching Barbara as she brushed her hair, Philip said to her, “Barbara, if ever you should tire of me and no longer wish to live with me, I shall expect you to tell me so. No fuss and no bother.”

“Now, what on earth brought that on?”

Philip shook his head. “I simply wanted you to know.”

“Suppose I didn't want to know?”

“Yes, I should have thought of that.”

She crawled into bed and put her arms around him. “I suppose it's your hair. You were very vain about your hair, Philip dear, but I'm quite used to this. Kiss me. I don't think that when a man and a woman make love, they should talk about it, even old folks like us. I do love you very much, but if you ever again apologize for loving me—well, you've seen me angry.”

“Yes, I have,” he admitted.

“Now make love to me. No more talking. No more apologies.”

They made love, and after that, content and fulfilled, Barbara fell asleep. Philip remained awake, and asleep she moved close to him, throwing an arm around him. He dared not move for fear of waking her, and in time he slept, their bodies intertwined.

I
N THE MORNING AT BREAKFAST
, Freddie warned them to eat lightly. “I've been rereading Ring Lardner's story ‘Thanksgiving.' Do you suppose I should read it to the guests before dinner?” he asked his mother.

“Don't you dare!” Eloise said. “I hate that story.”

“Very piggish,” Barbara agreed, and to Philip's blank look added, “It's about overeating. Sometimes I like Ring Lardner, sometimes I don't. I think he's brilliant, and he wrote with a knife. His brilliance is forgotten today. That's the fate of so many good writers. But such a savage commentary on Thanksgiving—well, I don't know.”

“I hear you're going down to Harry's place today.”

“I was going,” Eloise said, “but I can't. I have to stay with Cathrena. Do you know how many we have for dinner tonight? At least eighteen, not counting the children. I'm going to feed them first. Freddie, are you sure Judith is bringing her mother and father?”

“Yes, and for heaven's sake, embrace them, kiss them. This isn't easy for them. Maybe it's the hardest thing they ever faced.”

“Your mother knows that, Freddie,” Barbara said sharply.

“How old is Jean?” Adam asked, anxious to change the subject.

“Four—or five. Which is it, Barbara?”

Jean was Sam's little girl. “I'm ashamed to say I'm not sure, perhaps four and a half. I'm a rotten grandmother.”

Freddie said apologetically, “It's just that I'm nervous. Judith isn't bulging much yet, but—well, weddings are terribly serious to the Hopes. They're very religious and very straitlaced, and I haven't seen them since Judith told them.”

“It will be all right,” Eloise assured him. This is not the first time it's happened.”

“Let's not anticipate.” Barbara smiled. “Just go with the flow.”

“I'll walk them down to Hawthorn,” Freddie said. He turned to Adam. “Harry sent over four cases of Greenberg's Chardonnay. He's loaded with it. I've been trying to find a buyer in Los Angeles. They'll drink anything with ‘Chardonnay' on the label.”

“We won't serve it tonight. I won't give it to guests,” Adam said firmly.

“It's not bad at all,” Eloise said. “You two remind me of Hemingway and all his nonsense about noble wines. Why shouldn't we serve it? I will not offend Harry.”

“It's not Harry's vintage. It's Greenberg's.”

“Well,” Freddie said, “Dr. Hope likes red wine.”

“That does it!” Adam declared. “I will not have the father of Judith Hope drinking Greenberg's lousy Chardonnay. Sell the rest of it out in L.A. for whatever you can get.”

“Pop,” Freddie said, his tone gentle and conciliatory, “I have the solution. We have a case of Cohen's Chardonnay left over from the wedding. It's very good. I also have some lovely dry Chablis that I've been experimenting with. I'll put some Hawthorn labels on it, and Harry will be delighted. We'll all of us here drink the Cabernet.”

“Good heavens!” Eloise exclaimed. “You talk like we're a family of drunks. How much wine do we need?”

“A lot,” Freddie said. “We give six white and six red to Candido for Thanksgiving. He knows more about wine than any of us.”

“Watch Adam,” Barbara whispered to Philip, who was listening in amazement. “He admits to no one knowing more about wine than he does.”

Adam's face tightened, but he said nothing. Eloise said soothingly, “Dr. Hope will drink your best Cabernet. In fact, this might be the time to open a bottle or two of the Rothschild, if you have any left. This is a joyous occasion. Enough talk. Now, Freddie, take Barbara and Philip down to Hawthorn. It's a cold morning, so wrap up. The walk will do you all good.”

The stroll down the old Silverado Trail on this fine November morning was a treat in itself. The sky was steel blue, the air sweet and clean. The road was unspoiled, much as it had been fifty years ago, except for blacktopping; no towns, no stands, just the old oaks and hemlocks and an occasional ponderosa pine. As they walked, Philip observed that wine was a sort of religion in this place.

“Not religion,” Freddie said. “It's a way of life. The big places, like Gallo, have tried to turn it into a science, but the really great wines are the result of the vintners' experience and instinct. Take Sauterne, for example. You can make a dozen different Sauternes, from a sweet dessert wine to a dry table wine that is as good as anything California produces. We make some Sauterne at Highgate, and we label it table wine. We blend in some Thompson grapes, which are usually considered to be table grapes, and it's been enormously successful.”

“Then why don't you serve it tonight?” Barbara wondered.

“We sold it all, every last bit of it. It's a point of honor not to go into wine that has been sold or promised, and anyway, it's not dry enough for Adam's taste. And while it's very good, Pop is a sort of chateâu freak. Don't get me wrong, I love Adam—but we fight like cats and dogs. When I insisted on calling this simply dry table wine, he gave in, but not very willingly. There's no such thing as a super-great wine or noble wine, not even the Imperial Tokay, of which we produce a few gallons out of seeds from the emperor Franz Joseph's winery. Mother, who knows more about wine than she would admit to, read a book by Hemingway in which he talks about a noble wine, and Mother was ready to scream. She agrees with Adam that Highgate Cabernet is as good as any claret wine, and when I go to France I taste them all. Some are different, but I don't know that any are much better than ours. Joyce Ansel, who is the head of the department at the university and rates very high as an expert in viticulture, agrees with me. Of course, it depends on the year and the crop. There are great years and there are indifferent years. And the claret grapes that we depend on for the Cabernet also vary. But we're a business, and either we sell the wine or we go out of business.”

Philip, who had listened to Freddie's discourse with fascination, mentioned the wine auctions where a single bottle fetches anywhere from a thousand to five thousand dollars, for the great names like Rothschild.

Freddie laughed. “They're buying a pig in a poke, and nobody knows what's in a bottle until it's opened. It's great publicity for the wine business, but there's no such thing as one wine being a thousand dollars better than another. When you come down to it, wine is wine, and if it's good, it's good, and if it's bad, it's bad. Why don't you ask Adam about it tonight? I'd love to hear what he says.”

“I don't dare,” Philip said. “When it comes to the rites of wine, I'm just an onlooker.”

“How is Judith taking tonight?” Barbara asked. “Is she nervous?”

Freddie shrugged. “You haven't seen her yet? She's absolutely beautiful. When she covers the scars, you'd never know. Her nose is different—well, you'll see her. She'll be here by noon. I told her what a crowd we're having, and in spite of my assuring her that we have adequate help, she wants to help Mother. Maybe that's not so crazy. Do you remember Steve Cassala?”

“Of course I do.” And she explained to Philip, “Steve's father, Tony Cassala, financed my father and his partner, Mark Levy, in the shipping business. It's a long story and I won't go into it, but during the big earthquake the regular banks were burned or had their vaults locked by the heat. Tony Cassala used to lend money to and hold it for the Italian fishermen who didn't trust the big banks. So when the old banks burned, he became a banker—and grew into a very large one. But, Freddie, I invited Steve to the wedding. He and his wife, Joanna, never showed up. I thought perhaps he had died.”

“Almost, but not quite. He's in better shape, and she's in good health. He's eighty-nine, but she's a good deal younger. She's coming with him and her sister, Rosa, and Rosa's husband, Frank Massetti.”

“Your poor mother,” Philip said.

“Don't pity her, Phil. She loves it.”