East Side Story (25 page)

What he had not known and was only gradually beginning to suspect was that Isabel had grown up without parental love. Her father, an amiable and irresponsible alcoholic, married for such money as she had mistakenly thought he had by the icy Letitia, had been early shed and disappeared to the Orient. Her mother had finally found the money and security she craved in her marriage to the bland and dull Benson Carnochan, who was too stubborn to be dominated by her and too inwardly directed to be more than numbly conscious of her bad temper, and the match had more or less worked out, each learning to leave the other alone as much as possible.

A handsome woman herself, Letitia had been gratified by Isabel's beauty, and had used her excellent taste to see that her daughter was well turned out and put forward, but she had little heart and saw Isabel as she saw the interiors of her houses, as something to be "done up." She didn't even try to conceal her disappointment that Isabel lacked her own biting intelligence and constantly threw her impatience at what she regarded as the poor girl's stupidity in her face. She saw that marriage was the only way to dispose of her and deplored Isabel's lack of interest in beaux. Finally, she decided that what struck her as Pierre's "God-given" interest in her was what might save the day.

"For heaven's sake, can't you perk up a bit when you go out with him?" she cautioned Isabel. "Anyone can see that you have him hooked, though God knows why. A girl with your looks doesn't have to do much, but she has to do
something
."

"But I'm not sure I even want to get married."

"I'd like to know what else you think you can do with yourself."

"Maybe I can get a job or something. Lots of girls do."

"Lots of girls are trained for something. What are you trained for? You can't even count your trumps in a bridge game."

"Oh, Mummy, please! You're hurting my feelings."

"It's for your own good, my girl. I know what I'm doing. Didn't I marry a Carnochan myself? It wasn't a bad solution, even with Benson, and with Pierre it could possibly be brilliant. And if you don't mess things up with my old bitch of a mother-in-law, she may do handsomely by you. I know men like Pierre. They may be hard to live with if they don't get what they want, but they're fine enough husbands when they do. And he will get you, if you'll only play your cards right. You and he can go to the top of the world together. My God, when I think what I could have done with your opportunities! I guess it's true that God sends manna to those who have no teeth."

"But, Mummy, suppose I don't want to go to the top of the world!"

Letitia sighed deeply. "Then you're a fool."

The only person in the family whom Isabel could talk to heart to heart was her stepfather's mother, Ada Carnochan. This small, plain, dignified, and outspoken old lady, who despite her kindness would put up with no nonsense and was inclined to sniff at the oily manners excited by her large fortune, had early sensed that Isabel used her beauty to shield herself from people's discovering what she feared was her lack of other assets. To cope with her stepgranddaughter's problem, she spent more time with the girl than with her actual grandchildren, who, however affectionate, needed her less. Isabel, indeed, had become her favorite.

"But how do you yourself really feel about Pierre?" she wanted to know, when Isabel told her of her mother's bludgeoning. "Do you love him? Or could you love him? If we're going to talk about this at all, we may as well get down to basics."

"Well, he's nice to be with, you know. Really very nice. He's so smart and funny."

"Oh, I know that, of course. He rather makes up to his old great-aunt. He may put it on a bit, but I like it. He has charm. We can start by admitting that."

"And he has interesting ideas. Not like other people's at all. And I think he's kind. At least he seems so."

"My dear, I asked you about love."

"Well, I think maybe I could love him if he loved me."

"And he doesn't?"

"No. Though I think he'd like to."

"Because he thinks you'd make him a good wife? And wouldn't you?"

"But not a useful one, Gran. That's what worries me. I have this impression that he's looking for a wife who'll be socially useful to him. I don't mean moneywise. He's very well off himself."

"Humph. That doesn't mean he doesn't want more. These men! Don't tell me. But I'm far from viewing a mercenary motive as prohibitive, unless it's the only one. I was married in part for my fortune, and I always knew it. But unlike you, my dear, I was small and plain, and in the worldly society in which I grew up, I soon learned that money was my chief magnet. The thing to do was to pick the right man among the swains looking for it. And Bruce Carnochan was just that. He proved an admirable husband and father. But I agree with you that Pierre is not primarily interested in money. To begin with, he's very knowledgeable and is quite aware, I'm sure, that what you will have depends largely on myself and that I have a considerable progeny to share my estate. And second, as you say, he's a big earner himself. Pierre, my dear, is a better man than many consider him. He puts people off with his airs. But he has brains and character. He's what they call a catch. That doesn't mean for a minute that you ought to marry him. But it's something you ought to think about. A life with Pierre could be an interesting life."

"And now it's my turn, Gran, to ask
you
about love."

"Not all men are capable of great love. And those who are, are often prone to feel it for more than one woman in their lives. I suspect that the temperature of Pierre's heart is nearer cool than boiling. But that's not always a bad thing in a husband."

"Oh, Gran, that sounds so cynical!"

"I'm a realist, child. Or try to be. I've seen a lot of things in a long life, and Pierre is not a man to be underestimated. I know what some of the family think of him. That he's worldly and snobbish. That's so like a family. They skip over the fact that he was a wonderful son to his father and is still one to his mother, that he was a brave and competent officer in war, and that he's successful downtown. Furthermore, he's never been known, to my knowledge, anyway, to have been mean or malicious. So what do they have against him? Simply that he allows people to know that he thinks well of himself and that he wants to get on in the world."

"Gran, you're telling me that I should marry him!"

"I am not! I'm telling you that he'd make a good husband. Whatever he does, he'll do well."

"But would I be the wife he needs?"

"You can leave that decision to him. But, anyway, why shouldn't you be?"

"Because I'm stupid about so many things. Mother says I can't even count trumps."

"That's only because you don't like bridge. If you ever got to like it—and there's no reason you should—you'd count them soon enough."

"But I'm so slow!"

"My dear, you're quite capable of doing anything you really set your mind on."

"Oh, do you really think that?"

"I do. And if you think you
could
be in love with Pierre, doesn't that mean you are? A little bit, anyway?"

L
ETITIA CARNOCHAN
saw to it that her daughter's wedding was a principal event of the social season. And when the bride and groom returned from a honeymoon in Barbados, where a beautiful Palladian villa had been lent them by a client of Pierre's, they moved into a charming little Park Avenue duplex, which the bride's mother had tastefully decorated. It seemed to everyone that the lucky couple had a life opening before them as elegant as an issue of
Vogue
or
Town and Country.

Nor was it all outwardly seeming. Isabel, even in her moments of greatest apprehension, had to admit to herself that she had married a man of imaginative goodwill and kindness. He was always supportive, never impatient. When he instructed her in the details of how to manage a dinner party for a difficult client or what not to mention to a sensitive weekend hostess, he was never bossy or overdetailed and always appreciative of her efforts. But the instruction was there; that was the rub. She was not only a spouse; she was a pupil. She was being fitted, she could only surmise, for her role as a partner in what to him was evidently a noble enterprise. It was true that he was always careful not to overdo it. After one of their entertainments he would always congratulate her on how well she had done things, and only after that would he drop a gentle hint on how she should always check the guest list in advance to be sure of the names and how she could tactfully change a subject if it was arousing an argument too violent. Yet these gentle hints always suggested to her that she had failed him in one or another respect.

For some months their satisfactory lovemaking at night made her hope that at least she was not failing him in this very basic aspect of marriage, but eventually her gratification at her success in bed paled before the realization that any attractive woman could have given him that. Was she improving herself in the arts of social life, where his needs could only be supplied by a wife? Alas, she was increasingly convinced that she was not. She was getting worse, not better, at remembering names, and at table now she would sometimes sit in utter silence, unable to conjure up a word to say to the embarrassed and soon bored gentlemen on either side of her. And with her fear of further failure she became worse.

In time she began to excuse herself from dining out with the invention of a migraine. The third time this happened, Pierre insisted on staying home with her. He was all solicitude. She begged him desperately to leave her and go to his party, but he refused. Then she actually heard herself tell him that she might be pregnant. This, of course, would excuse everything. Pierre was elated.

"Darling, why didn't you tell me before? At the very first hint of it? Of course, we won't go out at all now until you are feeling absolutely fit."

"Oh, but you must!" she protested in dismay. "I'll be perfectly all right alone in bed with a book. You can't just isolate yourself because of me!"

"But I'll be glad to! And I'll read to you. Anything you like. Even one of your detective stories. After all, it'll only be till you give birth to a bouncing boy."

"Boy?"

"Our second will be a girl."

To her surprise, and almost as if some hidden fate was determined to spare her a lie, she discovered that she
was
pregnant. She was briefly delighted. Here at last was something she
could
do for him, and something that would fit in perfectly with all his plans for the future. And besides, it would give her a blessed intermission in the long and tedious drama of her social life; she could stay at home, in bed or on a couch, reading mysteries, as much as she liked. She shamelessly exaggerated the discomforts of her condition and treated herself to the isolation of what she fantasized as a luxurious Oriental harem maintained for the benefit of a single inhabitant. Pierre was constantly attentive and spent many of his evenings reading aloud to her from Jane Austen or the Brontes. She was content, but of course she always knew it couldn't last.

It ended abrupdy and painfully with a dangerous miscarriage, and her doctor recommended that she should put off starting another pregnancy for at least a year, and possibly two. For some weeks she was plunged into a deep depression, and it was not until she began to show signs of emerging from this dark period that Pierre urged her to take the first steps toward picking up the old strings of her life. And one of these, of course, was going out to dinner parties.

Little by little they resumed the old pattern of their existence. But there was a difference now. Isabel had discovered the anaesthetic of alcohol. A swig of gin before Pierre came home, from the tiny Burgundian chapel of a bar that her mother had designed off the living room, fortified her if they had to go out, and the swig soon became two.

It did not take Pierre long to perceive what was going on. He had already unsuccessfully tried to free her from smoking; now he undertook to tackle her drinking. He never reproached her, never scolded her, never even asked her if she had been imbibing. He would simply gravely warn her.

"Smoking, my dear, may kill you, but drinking is worse. It can ruin your life."

She swore to him that she would give it up, and would do so for a time, but she always returned to it, and when he removed the bottles from the little bar, telling her, of course, just what he was doing, she bought her supplies on the sly and hid them about her room, though she knew he never searched it. Of course, she did not fool him, and he insisted finally that she consult a psychiatrist, for he seemed to shudder at the publicity of Alcoholics Anonymous. Isabel went dutifully to this new doctor and undutifully shunned his advice. Her fuzzy condition at dinner parties was now widely noticed, and at first she tried to persuade herself that people thought each occurrence was a rare rather than a habitual thing, but it was soon evident even to her that their friends had classed her as a "case." Pierre mostly refrained from comment. At a social gathering, when he detected across the room (for he always had an eye on her) that she was beginning to look hazy, he would rise, get her coat, and approach her with a quiet: "Darling, I think you're looking tired. It's time we went home." And at home he would help her undress and put her to bed without a word. It agonized her to think that people were praising him as the perfect gentleman in dealing with a "sousy spouse." Was he even putting it on, she thought once with a stab of terror, to salvage what little gain he could from a lost cause?

The end, or what she hoped might be the end, came at a glittering dinner party given by old Mrs. Townsend Martin to bid farewell to her Gothic mansion on Fifth Avenue, now to be replaced by an apartment house in which a part of her purchase price would be the penthouse. At the long dining-room table, with its glittering gold service and centerpiece of Neptune on a craft driven by dolphins, before the splendid tapestry of Louis XV at a hunt, Isabel, who had been feeling unusually queasy, leaned suddenly forward and vomited all over the place in front of her.