Nantucket (16 page)

“It's what wives do, Cynthia,” said Rosemary. “You'll come to understand that eventually.”

The beautiful Texan turned her head as if she'd been slapped. She knows she's failing as Joe's “missus,” Andrew said to himself.

“I told you when you arrived in the third form,” Rosemary continued, suddenly on the attack. “‘You are not a princess.' We had
actual
princesses at St. Elizabeth's, but even they weren't allowed to carry on like princesses. Remember?”

“Did you two go to school together?” said Janis. “Why didn't you mention it before?”

“I didn't bring it up because St. Elizabeth's was a painful experience for Cynthia.”

“She was awful to me,” said Cynthia. “She made me stand on a pile of books barefoot.”

This made Joe laugh. “Maybe I should try that,” he said.

“Careful,” said Rosemary. “It was a very tough year.”

“Were they difficult books?” said Shiva.

Rosemary gave her husband a sharp look. Having seized the upper hand, she didn't need to destroy her former schoolmate.

“It didn't matter what the books were about,” said Cynthia. Andrew realised she was close to crying. “It was a punishment. It was unfair. The hall where you had to do it was cold. Everyone could look at you. The books wobbled. You had to stand there for half an hour, and if you fell off you had to start again.”

“What was the punishment for?” said Joe. It was clear he had never heard about this chapter in his wife's life before. It was also obvious that the notion of “punishment” interested him.

“It was a punishment for being an American,” said Cynthia. “I was an exchange student. I was fourteen. I was homesick.
Lady
Rosemary was head prefect. She could do anything she wanted.” Cynthia paused to gather her strength. “And I desperately wanted her to like me. You were smart. You were beautiful…”

“I was not a nice person,” Rosemary interrupted. “Sadly still true. But you are not correct that I could do anything I wanted. There were rules. You were being punished for complaining, which St. Elizabeth's regarded as a cardinal sin. I had no choice about the matter, even if I had reciprocated your crush, which I didn't.”

“The food was awful. The house was cold. We had to play stupid games in the mud and pretend we liked them.”

“All good training,” said Sally.

“What would you know about that?” hissed Cynthia, her anger boiling over at a stranger's intervention.

“I've worked as a nanny,” said Sally. “In the past, that is.”

“And what do you do now,” said Cynthia, “if I may ask.”

“I'm a prostitute.”

Reactions to this statement spilled out on top of each other.

“Party girl,” George corrected her. If Sally and the
Governor already knew each other, it explained the way she'd greeted him that afternoon.

Cynthia more or less snorted. I knew that, she seemed to be saying.

“How exciting,” said Judy.

“And I suppose you didn't know that,” said Cynthia to Andrew in a sarcastic voice.

“I did not,” said Andrew. There was no point in arguing with her. She'd eagerly undressed for Shiva earlier in the day, and now she was claiming to be offended – same as when Janis and Judy showed up. Cynthia, the prudish nude, he said to himself. Or was it nudish prude? Perhaps he needed to slow down on the wine.

“What a stunt,” said Shiva, “if I may use that word.” He appeared to assume Andrew had indeed arranged it.

Janis gave nothing away.

“Still working?” said Rosemary, as if she and pretend Cathy were colleagues.

“Not as such,” said Sally. “I stopped ten years ago. But I've always felt it would be dishonest to pretend I wasn't in the profession when I unquestionably had been in my twenties. Once a whore…”

Sally paused, as if what came next was the important revelation. “I was also a dominatrix for a while.”

Joe started to laugh and then suppressed it.

“Mostly I found
that
depressing,” Sally continued. “You work out what your client wants, and it's obviously painful. You're touching something deep inside him. There ought to be healing going on. But next week or next month he's back exactly the same, all eager to be hurt again. I don't know how psychoanalysts stand it. I had to quit. But it taught me a lot
about people.”

“So what do you do now?” said Rosemary. “And how did whatever her name is, Andrew's wife, find you?”

“You might say I'm a party planner. I get hired to make interesting things happen. When I was a domme, as I said, I discovered I could tell what people wanted…”

“What men wanted?” said Rosemary. By this point everyone else had stopped talking and was listening to this conversation.

“Men and women both. I come as a guest but partway through the party, I get things started.”

Perhaps it was in that context that George had encountered Sally. Andrew hoped so anyway. One cannot help wanting to know the President, and campaigns tend to uncover any damaging secrets a candidate has. But Andrew doubted his friend enjoyed being spanked.

“The objective is to let people have what they want but could never admit to,” Sally continued.

“You pretend to be a normal guest,” said Janis. “Just one who nobody else has met before. That's what you said, isn't it? The hostess introduces you as if you were a friend from out of town.”

“That's right,” said Sally. “If I'm identified as a professional party-starter – that's a better name for it than party planner – if they know what I am, it makes people self-conscious.”

“It isn't making me self-conscious,” said Joe.

“But
you
never are,” said Cynthia.

“So what do
we
want?” said Rosemary.

“I want another lobster,” said Sally cheerfully, standing up. By Andrew's count there were two of them left. “Anyone else?”

“What about my steak?” said Joe.

Sally gave him a smile and disappeared into the kitchen.

10

For a long moment, Sally having disappeared, the rest of the group just looked at each other. They all knew there was more. We're like primitive tribesmen about to be initiated, Andrew said to himself – adolescents waiting in the dark, waiting to confront the monster, hoping to withstand the rumoured pain, hoping to have a vision and become adults. It was a magical island. Sally had declared herself to have magical powers. She could divine secrets. At some level, everyone wanted to believe her.

“So what
does
everyone want?” said Rosemary, breaking the silence.

“I want to sleep with your husband,” said Judy gleefully, “but you already know that.”

“Is that all right with you, Shiva?” said Rosemary, as if she were asking him to give Judy a ride into town. “I should have mentioned it before. But this young American is so sweet and eager. Perhaps some of your sophistication will rub off on her. She's going to be a famous judge some day, I understand, probably a Supreme Court justice. She needs to become worldly. She is like a crown princess who will one day be the
ruler. She needs instruction. Could you manage that?”

At first, Shiva looked embarrassed, but as Rosemary spoke, the way she expressed the proposition began to tickle him. “I accept,” he said to Judy. He would have known what was afoot, of course, seeing her clothes in his closet. And then, turning to Janis, as if she had a say in what happened to her friend: “Is that all right? Do you approve?”

“You have my blessing,” said Janis.

Shiva took up Janis's hand and kissed it. Janis blushed. She was less sure of her footing than she looked. Andrew liked her blushing.

“Andrew,” said Rosemary. “Do we have any more champagne?” He rose from his chair. “And while you're up, could you bring out whatever's left of dinner?”

“Of course,” said Andrew. As he went to the kitchen, he passed Sally, who was returning to the table. He avoided catching her eye. He wasn't sure what relationship they were now supposed to have.

“Judy, you're out of the game,” said Rosemary, assuming the role of hostess now that Sally had become a shaman, “so perhaps you could empty the bowls with the lobster shells and bring them back. Joe, if you expect to sell any of your steak, you'd better get the platter.”

When everyone had claimed whatever food they wanted, Rosemary picked up the thread of the conversation. “So, Cathy – I think we'll keep calling you that – what comes next?”

“Why should we call her Cathy?” said Cynthia, her rage undiminished. “She isn't Cathy. She's an imposter.”

“As it happens, I know the other Cathy,” said the Governor, sticking his forefinger deep into the tail of the last lobster to extract the meat. “She's a nice girl. A bit frosty, sometimes. Isn't
that right, Andrew?”

Andrew had a mouth full of steak and chose not to respond.

“But this Cathy is a very good understudy,” the Governor continued, “and perhaps more fun than the original. Enthusiastic hostess. I think we should thank her for her efforts, treat her with appropriate respect.”

Cynthia made a guttural dismissive noise.

“I think we should call them
both
‘Cathy,'” said Shiva. “Neither one is the
real
Cathy or the
other
Cathy. They are simply different manifestations of a single reality. But perhaps I am thinking like a Hindu. In Puritan New England, one does not manifest, as I recall.”

The Governor smiled. “One does,” he said, “but not everyone is comfortable with it. The Puritans turned into Unitarians.”

“What
are
you two talking about?” said Cynthia.

“Boys showing off,” said Rosemary.

“I want to know more about this party-starting business,” said Joe, whose interest in metaphysics was limited.

“Or is ‘
games
mistress' a better term?” said Rosemary.

“I like that,” said Shiva, smiling at his wife. And then to Andrew: “A woman of manifest wit, is she not?”

Andrew had the sudden sense that Shiva was essentially presenting him with Rosemary, which probably told him all he needed to know about their marriage. You may have her, he seemed to be saying. Her clothes have left my closet. I understand. But please appreciate her. Acknowledge what an extraordinary woman I have collected, and now give to you. Andrew definitely appreciated Rosemary. But she'd given herself away, actually. All Shiva had done was let go – and he'd done that years earlier.

Cynthia had said, at some point, back when she was trying to flirt with Shiva, and he had referred to Nantucket as a “magical island,” that a happy marriage was a magical island. Shiva had responded that the quest for a happy marriage was misguided. His mother had told him that. What you wanted, she had said, was a “successful” marriage. Which perhaps he and Lady Rosemary had achieved. Andrew wished he could be sure Judy understood that.

“So you persuade adults to play spin-the-bottle?” said Cynthia, still trying to pick a fight. “Is that what you do,
Cathy the Second
?” She glanced at Shiva as she said this.

“If that's all they're up to,” said Sally.

“I take it your job is to get people to do things they don't want to do,” said Cynthia. “That's what our games mistress did at St. Elizabeth's. She made us be cold and get muddy.” She seemed covertly interested in what Sally was saying.

“No,” said Joe. “She gets people to do things they
do
want to do, but are reluctant to propose.” He looked over at his wife. She avoided eye contact.

“You mean if I'm being a very
strict
games mistress?” said Sally.

“Um,” said Joe. The notion that he liked “strict” stood out all over him. This was a man who could conjure hundreds of millions of dollars out of the air by apprehending reality ahead of his competitors. But privately, he liked fantasies.

“Do you do strict?” said Rosemary.

“I can. But the point is not what I do but what my clients do to each other, once they're given permission.”

“Proceed,” said Rosemary grandly.

“Well, here's something I've done a few times – and to be clear, I'm not proposing it.” She paused while the last lobster
shells were tossed into bowls and wine glasses were recharged. “It's moderately naughty,” Sally continued. “Moderately dastardly in fact. Could I have another glass of wine too, please, Andrew sweetheart?”

She was going into character, Andrew realised, which was a bit nervous-making. His guests were gleefully expectant. If this were a primitive festival, Andrew would be the sacrificial pig. Not fat, you understand – Andrew still looked fine in a swimming suit – just destined for butchering.

“I use this game when there are two women at a party who are quarrelling,” said Sally.

“As you and Cynthia seem to be,” said Janis.

“Or rivals or enemies,” said Sally, “though maybe they don't admit it. But I hope Cynthia doesn't regard me that way.” She smiled at the group, having ensured that Cynthia would hate her, at least for present purposes.

“We can be enemies if you want,” said Cynthia defiantly.

“As you like,” said Sally. “It's called the husband game. Here's how it works. The two women…”

“You and me,” said Cynthia.

Yes, butchering, Andrew said to himself.

“We can play if you like,” said Sally. “The way it starts is that we make our husbands undress.”

Sharp intake of breath.

“But you don't have a husband,” said Judy.

“Andrew was my husband yesterday. And Joe is still Cynthia's, I think. They'll do.”

Andrew looked over at Joe, who shrugged. He realised Joe would be perfectly comfortable naked. Good body. Probably liked the idea. Andrew himself didn't like the idea, but he was trapped. He was responsible for Sally's presence. He was
entertaining billionaires. He had to play whatever games were proposed.