Judith Krantz (36 page)

Liddy started entertaining slowly. She had to be careful with her invitations so that she didn’t bring the infection of Philadelphia gossip to Marbella. Her first guests were Deems and Nora White. From the moment they arrived, she and Deems fell back into their mutual obsession with each other, and Nora, fascinated by Marbella, never noticed it in spite of the fact that Liddy was now without a mate. She asked long-unseen friends from Foxcroft and older, established European friends of her family’s. Everyone accepted her invitations, for Marbella had quickly become the most desirable destination of the International Set. Soon Liddy began to make friends among the many aristocrats, both British and European, who came to stay at the Marbella Club, and added them to her house parties.

In a matter of only several remarkably discriminating and well-managed years, Liddy Kilkullen’s house parties during the Marbella high season became an institution, discussed on the society pages of newspapers, and written about in magazines. Her unfortunate divorce was overlooked in Philadelphia, as her old friends wrote to her in her alluring exile, hoping for invitations.

Liddy always filled all three guest suites since, in her opinion, less than six guests didn’t provide enough gaiety or variety. She rose hours before they did to go over the menus with her chef, to give orders to her industrious little maids, to buy the best produce at the local markets, to arrange the flowers, and to telephone
to check on the day’s arrangements, making sure that the invitations to tennis, lunch and cocktails, on one of the yachts anchored in the harbor of Porto Banus, were all organized satisfactorily. Of course, there was always the Marbella Club, the blessed club where everyone ended up sooner or later, but the bills there had an unpleasant way of adding up, and although no one ever realized it, Liddy had to be careful how she spent her money.

Since visitors to Marbella had nothing to do but amuse themselves, entertaining was the primary occupation of every woman who had a house there. With the energy and attention to detail that Liddy expended, she could have run an excellent, small Swiss hotel. Once the house had been done over and furnished, none of her guests would have guessed that she could entertain in her lavish, openhanded style merely on the alimony she received from Mike and the additional ten thousand dollars’ income she had inherited.

In return, Liddy was invited to stay at great houses all over Europe, England and the Eastern Seaboard. She was as marvelously professional a guest as she was a hostess. Although she remained beautiful, she never threatened any woman’s marriage; sexual intrigue only interested her in the form of gossip; she quickly picked up as much Spanish, French and Italian as she needed to make conversation with any bore in any civilized country; she could be counted on to play tennis and bridge expertly and to charmingly animate any dinner table.

But Lydia Henry Stack Kilkullen, in spite of the success with which she established herself in the whirlwind of international society, never forgot the period of her life when only her wits, luck, timing and hard work had enabled her to rise from the ashes of her divorce.

She was
owed
, she would brood, when she had a moment to herself,
she was owed
. No matter how successful she was now, no matter how many invitations
she received or issued, no one could ever repay her for those years of her marriage, the forever lost, wasted, joyless years of what should have been her glorious young womanhood. She should never have been forced to cater to guests, she should have been—always—the one who was catered to, the one about whose comfort others worried. Even now she had to keep pareful books, to worry about the rising cost of living in Spain, where it had once been so cheap; even now she had to think about pleasing, always pleasing, in her own house or in the houses of others, for she was a single woman, and a single woman must always please.

There was no financial revenge, she realized bitterly, nothing she could do to claim what should have been hers, as the rapidly developed land all around the Kilkullen ranch turned to pure gold in the hands of builders. But through her clever tongue, her network of friends and her knowledge of the inside workings of her world, Liddy did manage to take a steady revenge for the disappointments of her life.

If a woman she didn’t like was foolishly indiscreet and Liddy Kilkullen heard about it, the news found its way back to her husband, although no one ever knew how he had learned the truth. If a new hostess attempted to establish herself in Marbella, and she was someone without sources of power, she found herself frozen out, and never suspected what Liddy had said about her. If a married man preferred men and thought it was a secret, he was unmasked by Liddy Kilkullen if it suited her purposes, but no one could ever point to the source of information. She knew who took drugs, who drank too much, who cheated at cards, who had married for money and regretted it, whose sexual tastes were unsavory or criminal, who owed too much money and to whom it was owed.

She was like a clear, ever-flowing well in a village from which all the inhabitants dipped their pitchers, never knowing that the water they drank might make them ill. As she grew older, Liddy grew more vengeful,
more sophisticated, more amusing, more poisonous.

Only one human being besides her daughters was entirely safe from Liddy’s evil: Deems White. He and Nora were invited to Marbella at least twice during the season, and soon Nora became addicted to what she considered her unique position as part of the Marbella set, and made no objection to the frequency of their visits, which cost no more than the price of the airline tickets.

Nora White and Henry White, Deems’s father, had good reason to feel that their ambitions for Deems were prospering. Henry White was a leader of the Orange County Republican Party, and Nora could be counted on for heavy and steady contributions to anyone her father-in-law favored.

Deems raised no objections to their newly formed political ambitions for him. It was more congenial, and more amusing, for such a charming man to win votes than it was to litigate. During the 1960s he had held a number of local offices, each one more important than the preceding one. Nora drew the line at his running for statewide office, for she couldn’t imagine herself living in Sacramento, but Congress was altogether a different matter, she realized when her father-in-law raised the possibility.

If Deems was elected to Congress, the Whites would live in Washington part of the year and in San Clemente for the remainder, and in both places, with Nora’s well-invested, ever-increasing income, they could cut a splendid figure. Her exposure to the pleasures of Marbella had induced Nora to pay more attention to her looks and her clothes, and she had transformed herself into a perfectly acceptable-looking woman who was, if nothing else, instantaneously perceived to be rich. Since she was good-humored and polite, people spoke well of her, as people always enjoy speaking of their rich friends, feeling the richer themselves.

Deems White, in his early forties, was easily
elected to Congress. He was a natural candidate; he spoke extremely well in public, and his grasp of issues was clear and sensible; he was a part of a Republican family who had lived in Republican Southern California for generations; and he charmed the voters as he charmed everyone else. The only surprise was that he hadn’t run for the office sooner. Nora was a happy woman, thrilled by the success of her ambitions for her husband and certain that this was only the beginning of an honorable career.

Liddy watched over Deems’s rise in government from Marbella, now far closer to him than ever before. On the first visit the Whites had made to Marbella, right after she had finished her villa, she and Deems had finally found the blissful solitude they had never been able to establish in California. Nora never grew accustomed to the late Spanish nights that ended after three in the morning. Every afternoon, after the late lunch out by the pool or at the club, she slept deeply until it was time to dress for cocktails. Deems and Liddy, unlike Nora, drank nothing at lunch, and unlike Nora, they needed little sleep.

During each of those afternoons, when all of Marbella was still, Deems would come to Liddy’s room, where she waited for him, the shutters drawn against the sun, her pique bedspread removed by her maid in preparation for Liddy’s siesta, her embroidered silk sheets freshly changed each morning. A creamy ocher light shimmered in the corners of the room, where drops of sunlight pooled on the terra-cotta floor, but otherwise the room was almost as dark as night. It was never too warm in the cloistered room, nor was it ever too cool; lilies and jasmine perfumed the air.

Liddy wore her dark hair shingled as short as a boy’s now, but she always changed into one of the superbly made, modestly cut, satin-and-lace nightgowns that she ordered in Madrid. When she let Deems in, after his single tap, she locked the door securely behind her.

Wordlessly, without any explanation, they slipped into Liddy’s open bed together, Deems wearing
nothing but the accepted houseguest uniform of swimming trunks. Usually they were utterly content just to lie intertwined, close, close, in the miraculous twinship of their dreams, Liddy’s face buried in Deems’s neck, his face touching the smoothness of her short hair, so intimately connected by the contact of skin on skin, breath on breath, sigh on sigh, that they wanted nothing more.

When he was at home in San Clemente, Deems White was in the habit of leaving his office several times a week, giving one of a hundred reasonable and uncheckable excuses, and driving rapidly to San Diego. There, in the depths of the dark, squalid bars near the port, he would rapidly select and pick up a young, unknown sailor from the naval base. For enough money the sailor would follow him to a cheap hotel, where Deems would penetrate the young man in furtive, frantic, potent secrecy and exquisite pleasure. He would stay with the sailor as late as he dared, using him often and purposefully. On these frequent trips to the nearby port, Deems found the absolutely necessary relief for the inadmissible longing that he had hidden all of his life.

Now, when he had not bent over a young and willing man in a few days, now when he was a house-guest at Liddy’s, now when he was lying in her bed, utterly safe from the world, now when he became aware of the muscular firmness of Liddy’s buttocks and the strength of her legs, sometimes he would feel his penis rise and fill as they held each other so chastely. Deems would wait until he was certain that he had an erection that would not go away. When he felt himself in the sure grip of a ferocious impatience, he pulled off his trunks.

When she realized that he was naked, Liddy would turn her head away, never looking down. Silently, with only a touch, Deems would indicate to Liddy that he wanted her to turn around in the bed, so that her back was toward him, and pull up the hem of her nightgown so that she was exposed up to her waist. She moved as elegantly and deliberately as an
athlete as she raised one of her long, smooth legs so that she was spread open far enough to receive his penis. Her eyes closed, her breathing scarcely quickened, she refrained from a single movement that would indicate that she had any other expectation of him but this silent, slow, sweet intrusion. Sometimes he simply remained inside her for a long, long, close time without thrusting at all, clasping her from behind with his arms. She would relax backwards into him with a sigh of pleasure, but she never rocked her buttocks in an insinuating way that would have suggested that she wanted him to do anything more. Sometimes they fell asleep in that position and woke later, with a feeling of mysterious joy.

Yet on other occasions when Liddy held herself still in that undemanding position, Deems would reach down and pull up her nightgown so that he could caress her between her legs, touching her body with so little aggression, almost absentmindedly, for such a long time and with such great delicacy, that she would be unable to hold back the noiseless, subtle, but profound climax that Mike Kilkullen had never been able to win from her.

More often, as the days of his visit went on, and Deems lay there with his eyes closed, pressed up against her firm rear, as far inside her wet softness as he could go, it would happen that he imagined that she was a young sailor, a very young and tender sailor in whom he had engulfed himself more easily than most, and then he would come to plunging, sudden life inside her with an urgent vigor that would have astonished his wife. When he finally poured himself into Liddy, a smile of utter contentment would cross her lips, but she never claimed any matching satisfaction.

No matter what took place during their siesta hours in Marbella, Liddy and Deems never spoke of it to each other afterwards, just as they never parted their lips when they kissed. Whatever it was that they had together was perfect for each of them. Its precise nature would have been disturbed by words, its marvelous mystery dissipated. They had always understood
each other. Now, every afternoon of every Marbella vacation, year after year, they could touch each other in ways that satisfied them both utterly. It was enough to know that it would continue forever, as long as there was a room in which they could lock themselves away while Nora slept.

Clothes had always been a problem for Liddy Kilkullen. The rich European and American women who became her closest friends dressed with enormous expense and rarely had to repeat a dress. No matter if they spent their days in bathing suits and tennis clothes, their evenings demanded elegance and lots of variety.

Eventually, Liddy Kilkullen realized that the big sales at New York department stores provided her with the only way to dress almost as well as her friends. Since European haute couture was completely beyond her means, she contented herself with the best of American ready-to-wear. Once her daughters were married, when she stayed with them in New York there was the additional economy of the hotel bill. And, of course, it was nice to see the girls in person instead of just keeping in touch by phone, no matter how annoying they usually managed to be.